Loan Charge

Debate between David Davis and Iain Duncan Smith

Thursday 18th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir David Davis]

Yes, my hon. Friend is right. I am afraid that one of the characteristics of miscarriages of justice—I have forgotten who raised this point earlier, so please forgive me for not referencing them—is that the victim at the beginning is probably the most unpopular person in society. They are thought to be guilty and may even doubt themselves over whether they have made a mistake. These people, by and large, have been compelled to do what we are talking about. They have been offered a job on these terms only, so they have had no choice, but then they think, “Well, maybe I should have known.” Then, like the sub-postmasters, they are persuaded by the people dealing with them that they are the only one.

Until our campaign started, all these people felt that they were the only one, or one of a few nasty tax evaders—not tax avoiders—so they gave in. Of course, it is like the Gestapo: confession never saves you; it is a step to execution. That is how it works, I am afraid. That is true of all big organisations full of people who are well-intentioned, but who defend the institution. That is why, answering my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset, it goes on through Government after Government after Government. It is not the Ministers who do this, but the members of the institution.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I get all of that and my right hon. Friend is right, but there is a peculiarity about HMRC, with its powers and lack of accountability. It does not publish accounts, and Ministers come and go; they do not really run that Department. That really is the issue. Bad as it might be elsewhere, it is astonishingly bad now because of HMRC’s behaviour.

[Sir David Davis]

My right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset listed a few of the other cases, from Hillsborough onwards, so it does come back to that. Even the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) used to run, has its own police force, in effect, and its own prosecutors. That is one of the clues. This will come back time and again with HMRC and others. He is right that we need to hold this organisation to account. It serves the people, not the Government of the day. This Parliament is the institution that serves the people and, starting with the Public Accounts Committee, we should be holding HMRC to account, but there are many others who should get involved.

I have given a completely different speech from the one I intended to give, because everybody else said everything before I rose, but I will finish with a point I certainly wanted to make. The BBC once referred to me as an old war horse, so I will give the Minister some old war horse advice, having been there once or twice myself. One of the lessons of the last few weeks is that Ministers—junior Ministers in particular—are very easily led to give dead bat answers in the Chamber. They are the answers handed to them by their officials, and they have no other answers to give, unless they want to end their career on the spot—I have done that twice, but never mind. This is not about his answers today, but the simple truth is that unless he wants to be seen in the same light as Ministers in the past—maybe he wants to be a future leader of the Liberal Democrats—he needs to go back to his Department and say, “I want to see the truth. Here are the things you’ve done. Why did you not tell the House of Lords why you are not pursuing the promoters of these schemes? Why did you tell people you only go for half their disposable income when you’re not doing that?” Get the answers, Minister. Then, when you next come back to the Chamber—and you will have to come back to the Chamber again—you can give us the truth.

Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill

Debate between David Davis and Iain Duncan Smith

2nd reading
Monday 7th March 2022 Commons Chamber

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

Given the nature of the debate, I will try to make my simple points in three minutes. [Interruption.] There were cheers from the Government Benches, anyway.

I suspect that we will all vote for this Bill. The House is of one in wishing to stop the murderous behaviour of Putin in Ukraine and to punish him and his elite for carrying out such evil crimes against humanity. That is not to say this is a perfectly crafted Bill. To some extent, that is inevitable; it has had to be constructed in a hurry from an original economic crime Bill that was designed for a different purpose under different circumstances. Worse than that, in some ways, it is being operated by three or four Departments, some of which are operating in areas that they are not used to, which is often not a pretty sight, and I speak as an ex-Minister in that respect.

The Government, I think, will do two sensible things. First, they will accept most, or many, of the amendments that have been tabled, which is sensible because most are thoughtful and all are well intentioned. Secondly, the Home Secretary said that there will be a second economic crime Bill and of course we are making plans and projections for that. One of its functions will be to correct the mistakes that we make today, of which there will be many, because we are dealing with a difficult and sophisticated adversary and we are making decisions quickly.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I want my right hon. Friend to extend his speech slightly. Does he agree—I hope my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is listening too—that whatever happens with the Bill, we are clear that those in the other place who deliberately amended previous legislation to water down the provisions that would have seen us go after many of these people, have some warning not to do that ever again?

[Mr Davis]

I am pretty sure that they will hear that warning when they look back at this debate.

I do not often quote Lenin, but it is probably appropriate. As he famously said,

“A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at both ends,”

which is also true of the Bill. It will do great harm to the Russian economy and to our adversaries in Russia, but it will also do some harm to us—or at least, the retaliation will—and it will particularly hit the least well-off. We will see greater price inflation, less growth, less trade and therefore fewer jobs. We must recognise that when we undertake what we are doing here. We can make Russia a pariah state but Putin will retaliate, and we must be ready. We need to be ready for fuel crises, cyber-attacks and ludicrous threats from the Kremlin.

Beyond the Bill, there are many further things that we can do in the west and we should be ready to do them. To pick one example, the allies should be ready to reduce every Russian embassy to a bare minimum—to skeleton status—by the expulsion of diplomats at the first sign of retaliatory action from Russia. It must be clear to Russia that it will pay if it retaliates again.

We have said, and we must keep saying, that the Bill is not aimed at punishing the Russian people—that is incredibly important. It should target the Russian Government, Putin and his henchmen, which is why the actions in the Bill against oligarchs are as important as the actions against Russian banks and commercial institutions. There was some briefing from Whitehall over the weekend that implied that they are not, but that is wrong.

We have all heard the rumours that Putin has something like $200 billion of personal wealth. He does not hold any of it himself; it is held by the 140-plus oligarchs around the world. Targeting them, therefore, is at least as important as targeting the Russian state banks. To do that properly, we must act fast, which is the thrust of my new clause 29, which I will speak to later in Committee.

We should not kid ourselves. This is not an economic crime Bill, but an economic warfare Bill, and it is a war that liberal democracies cannot afford to lose.

Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill

Debate between David Davis and Iain Duncan Smith

Committee stage
Monday 7th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

Yes, I do, but my hon. Friend must bear in mind that the burden in the new clause—the responsibility and requirements—falls on the person who is sanctioned.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I was not going to intervene on my right hon. Friend but I have been looking back over the list in his new clause. Does he think there is a slight problem, in that the new clause talks of

“selling any assets they own or…moving any assets they own or have an interest in out of the United Kingdom, or…moving any of their funds out of the United Kingdom”

but it does not cover anything about gifting assets out to an individual who may then transfer them immediately? Does he think that ought to be included in the measure?

[Mr Davis]

Yes, my right hon. Friend makes a good point. The reason why gifting and transferring to relatives, which is another category, is not in there is because I took—I almost ripped it out of the legislation—the legislation that we put in place for Skripal, which also omitted those things. My right hon. Friend is quite right, though, and had my new clause been accepted today, I would have looked to make two changes when the Bill went to the Lords, the first of which would be to do that—to tighten it. The other would be to include a right of appeal if it went on too long the other way round, to balance the human rights issue.

We should bear in mind the fact that the National Crime Agency, for example, has people on police bail. I know of a case in which people have been on police bail for five years and we know nothing about it, so the restriction in my new clause on somebody who faces possible sanction is much less than the restriction the NCA imposes on some people. It is vital that we prevent ultra-wealthy individuals, with their teams of highly paid lawyers, advisers and accountants, from exiting the UK with their ill-gotten gains or hiding them where we cannot find them or get them.

By the way, I am a great believer in the presumption of innocence, but if somebody came out of the old Soviet Union—Russia—in the years between 1990 and 2010 with £1 billion, £2 billion, £3 billion or £4 billion to their name, and they were previously an officer of the Russian state, I do not quite start with the presumption of innocence that I would normally start with. I would start with a requirement on them to explain where that came from. That seems to me to be a reasonable, common-sense modification of my normal “mad-libertarian” interests.

Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill

Debate between David Davis and Iain Duncan Smith

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 10th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

With respect to the hon. Gentleman, I have no idea what he was intervening over. There is a free market, and when a free market operates we have competition because companies are set up to solve problems and sell their goods. When a company has unlimited funds and can undercut the others, there is no money for them, they cannot operate and they will go out of business. It is fairly logical for anybody who understands the free market.

[Mr David Davis]

It is not just subsidy that supports Huawei and undermines its competition. At least some members of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service believe that Huawei started by stealing Nortel’s technology, which ended up destroying Nortel and putting Huawei in a dominant position.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was going to come to that, but now that he has mentioned it, let us kill this one completely. The reality is that there has been a whole series of attempts—successful ones—to steal technology from other companies in the field, thus driving them out, by finding the edge they have on technology and selling it at a cheaper price. The bidding that took place under the previous Labour Government was raised earlier. I am not blaming the Labour Government for that; that just happens to be the way it was. But the amount paid by those companies was astonishing—about £24 billion to £25 billion—and it left them bereft of cash and desperate for cheap product.

Huawei and 5G

Debate between David Davis and Iain Duncan Smith

Wednesday 4th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I do not think John Lewis is in the market, but we can check that. I have not been there for any telecommunications.

I say to my colleagues and to you, Mr Paisley, that the situation is an utter mess at the moment.

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

I have been listening carefully to my right hon. Friend’s brilliant speech. As far as I can see, so far he has knocked down the Government’s arguments on technical grounds, diplomatic grounds, security grounds, practical grounds, commercial grounds and public safety grounds. After listening to his speech, there are no grounds on which to accept Huawei involvement in our national infrastructure. Can it be, therefore, that the Government’s only argument for accepting Huawei’s involvement is fear of China’s economic and geostrategic power? Giving in to that may be expedient, but does my right hon. Friend agree that it would be geostrategically wrong to kowtow to the Chinese Government?

EU Exit Negotiations

Debate between David Davis and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 13th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

On the question about Northern Ireland, what I have said in terms, which is what I have said here in the House, is that there will be no internal border within the United Kingdom. That is an absolute fundamental because, apart from anything else, the Good Friday agreement—the Belfast agreement—requires the Government of Northern Ireland to operate on behalf of all communities, and at least one community in Northern Ireland would not accept a border in the Irish sea.

As for the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, everybody has accepted that there must be no return to a hard border. Some of that is dealt with by the continuation of the common travel area, which has been around since 1923—in that respect, it is not new. In terms of the customs border, there is of course already a difference between levy and tax rates and excise rates north and south of the border, and we manage without a hard border. That is what we will continue to do.

With respect to the Budget, the hon. Gentleman is optimistic if thinks the Chancellor gives any of us more than a week of advance warning of his Budget. Of course, I have discussed with him the financial aspects of our relationship with the European Union at many meetings.

As for the new legislation, I do not think it is in the gift of the Government to put before the House primary legislation that is incapable of amendment. The nature of primary legislation is that it is always capable of amendment. Of course, we will have the practical limitations of having signed a deal and there may be implications because of that, but the whole thing will be put in front of the House.

[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend in being clear in his statement that, come 29 March 2019, as we leave the European Union, the European Court of Justice will no longer have direct authority here in the United Kingdom, thus dispelling the games being played out by the Opposition, as we heard this morning.

May I take my right hon. Friend back to what he said in his statement about the Bill and the motion? As I understand it, if we had a motion that was voted on but not passed, that would negate the idea of a Bill that could be amended. If there was a Bill and it was amended—as we were always told throughout the Maastricht negotiations and beyond—an amendment could not be accepted at the end of the day because the agreement would already have been made and thus an amendment would alter the agreement. Does not that potentially lead us into a situation in which we have a Bill that changes the agreement, but the other side does not wish to make those changes?

[Mr Davis]

With respect to the first half of my right hon. Friend’s question, if the original motion is put but not passed, the deal falls—full stop; in toto. He is quite right about the second part, but he will remember the Maastricht Bill and, as I remember it, there were quite a lot of amendments and quite a lot of votes on it. The House was able to express its view, but it did so in the light of the consequences.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Davis]

I am afraid I did not hear—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

It was very good—very good.

[Mr Davis]

I am sure it was a brilliant exposition, but I did not hear it.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between David Davis and Iain Duncan Smith

Thursday 7th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I will endeavour to be brief. In rising to support the Bill in principle and in many cases in fact, I also offer my support to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). He remembers that in the lead-up to the Maastricht debate, we had quite a long Second Reading.

[Mr David Davis]

I organised that.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Exactly. I wonder whether, through my right hon. Friend’s good offices, the powers that be might make it possible to have a further extension on Monday to give more Back-Benchers an opportunity to speak. I say that because I remember the Maastricht debates, where we went through the night on the first day and ended the second day at 10 o’clock. Everyone got to speak—as many people wanted to speak then as now—and there was no time limit, as I recall, Mr Speaker, although I make no criticism of your imposing a time limit on me, as I am sure I will manage to fit within it. I just gently urge that there might be some scope for such an extension, even by Monday.

I support the Bill because it is clearly necessary. Let us start from the simple principle of how necessary it is. We have to get all that European law and regulation and so on transposed into UK law so that it is applicable, actionable and properly justiciable in UK law, and that requires a huge amount of action. There are very many pages of laws. I was looking at them the other day and I said, “If we were to vote on everything in that, we would have to have something in the order of 20,000 different votes.” There is no way on earth that that can possibly happen.

I listened with great care to the arguments of the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer). I thought he made a very well-balanced speech and made his case for the need for change within the Bill rather well, but I would argue that the Labour party’s position does not fit with his speech. I go back to Maastricht, when John Smith led the Labour party. Because he was a strong believer in the European Union, the Labour party voted to support the legislation, but it then acted separately in Committee, where it opposed elements of the legislation that it did not agree with or thought needed changing. That is the position that the Labour party should adopt.

In other words, the reasoned way that the Labour party should behave is to reserve its position on Second Reading and then, subject to whatever changes it thinks necessary in Committee to the detail of the Bill, make a decision about what to do on Third Reading. To vote against the principle of the Bill is to vote against the idea that it is necessary to make changes to European law in order to transpose it into UK law. That is the absurdity that the Opposition have got into.

I know what it is like; we have been in opposition. There is a temptation to say behind the scenes, “I tell you what: we could cause a little bit of mayhem in the Government ranks by trying to attract some of their colleagues over to vote with us against Second Reading.” Fine—they fell for that, but the British public will look at this debate in due course and recognise that the Labour party ultimately is not fit for government.

In a sense, the detail of the Bill is not the issue; it becomes the issue once we have got through Second Reading. I accept and recognise that the Government have talked about possibly making major changes to the Bill. I observe that we are therefore not in disagreement about the need for the Bill. That is why the House should support the Bill’s passage, but there may be elements in it that need some change.

I note also that paragraph 48 of the report by the Select Committee on the Constitution, published this morning, which the right hon. and learned Member mentioned, states:

“We accept that the Government will require some Henry VIII powers in order to amend primary legislation to facilitate the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union”.

However, the report goes on to say that there also need to be

“commensurate safeguards and levels of scrutiny”.

So the debate is not about the need—

EU Exit Negotiations

Debate between David Davis and Iain Duncan Smith

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

First, on flexibility, I have just mentioned areas that matter to individuals, such as guaranteeing their pensions, guaranteeing their healthcare and so on, and those areas did involve some flexibility on the part of the British negotiating team, which did a very good job.

On notification, I chaired a number of JMC meetings—I do not do it anymore, as the JMC is now chaired by the First Secretary of State—to keep the devolved Administrations up to speed. Indeed, yesterday I briefed in detail Mike Russell of the Scottish Government and Mark Drakeford of the Welsh Administration. Obviously, at the moment I have a bit of difficulty briefing the Northern Ireland Executive, because they do not exist yet. But the hon. Gentleman can take it as read that the concerns of the devolved Administrations have been taken on board very squarely and will continue to be so in the course of the ongoing negotiation.

[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I urge my right hon. Friend not to accept the advice of the Opposition party, which only six weeks ago was in favour of leaving the customs union and the single market, only to reverse that position today; he should stay steady on the course of the Government. On transition and implementation deals, over which the Opposition have got very excited, may I remind him of one simple fact: you cannot have any discussion about transition or implementation until you know what you are transitioning to? Thus the agreement over what we get with the European Union comes before any discussion about transition deals.

[Mr Davis]

I take my right hon. Friend’s point about the Labour party. I was being quite kindly to my opposite number, the shadow Brexit Secretary—after all, I only have to negotiate with Brussels, whereas he has to negotiate with his entire Front Bench! My right hon. Friend is right to say that we have to know where the endgame will be—where the end position will be—in order to get an accurate description of the implementation and transition period. I will differ from him on one point: that does not mean that we should not make it clear up front that we intend to have some sort of implementation period, where it is necessary—only where it is necessary.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between David Davis and Iain Duncan Smith

Thursday 9th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

I think that the Scottish National party needs a bit more originality in its questions as well.

The simple fact is that no powers that are currently exercised by the Scottish Government will be removed from the Scottish Government. As for other powers coming back from the EU, we will consider—in conjunction with representatives of the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive, when they are back in place—what is best for the United Kingdom and the constituent nations thereof. It is very important for us to have as much devolution as possible, but it is also very important for us not to damage the United Kingdom single market, which is four times as valuable to the Scots as the EU single market.

[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I wonder whether, during the discussions and negotiations, my right hon. Friend raises an issue that the Scottish National party is constantly putting on the table, namely a special arrangement for being in the single market. Recently, the Partido Popular in Spain made it absolutely clear—I wonder whether my right hon. Friend has translated this for the Scottish National party and its leader in particular—that its policy, and that of the other parties in Spain, was that there would be no special arrangement for the SNP, and that, should the SNP seek to leave the United Kingdom and rejoin the European Union, it would be vetoed by Spain on both counts.

[Mr Davis]

My right hon. Friend has made his point as well as ever. I believe that this issue will arise again in a later question on the Order Paper. The simple truth is that it is not solely a technical matter within the United Kingdom; it is also something that we must deliver diplomatically.

Article 50

Debate between David Davis and Iain Duncan Smith

Tuesday 24th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

Again, I am surprised. I would have thought that, of all people, the Scottish National party attached great importance to the results of elections to the Scottish Parliament, in which last time the Scottish Conservative party came second under the estimable Ruth Davidson.

To the main point of the hon. Gentleman’s question, I want to make two responses. First, the process we have gone through with all the devolved Administrations—the joint ministerial process—has been going on for some months now, and at the very last monthly meeting we had a presentation from Mike Russell, the Scottish Government Minister, on the Scottish Government’s proposals. We disagreed with some and agreed with some absolutely—for example on the protection of employment law—and some we will debate in the coming weeks and months, most particularly on the point the hon. Gentleman raised: the question of devolution and devolved powers.

The hon. Gentleman knows that I am a devolutionist. I can say to him firmly that no powers existing in the devolved Administrations will come back, but there will be powers coming from the European Union and we will have to decide where they most properly land, whether that is Westminster, Holyrood or wherever. The real issue there is the practical interests of all the nations of the United Kingdom—for example, preserving the single market of the United Kingdom and the United Kingdom’s ability to do international deals. There is a series of matters that are just as important to the ordinary Scot as they are to the ordinary English, Welsh or Northern Irish citizen, and that is what we will protect.

[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

The very fact that this was a split judgment shows that our right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was absolutely right to take the case all the way to get a full decision. I ask the Secretary of State to resist our right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) and not to overcomplicate this matter. After all, the question is: should the Government trigger article 50? I urge the Secretary of State, when he brings the Bill to Parliament, to keep it short, to keep it simple and, most of all, to keep it swift?

[Mr Davis]

Well, we will certainly keep it straightforward. My right hon. Friend is right: this was—is—a unique circumstance in many ways. It is unique in terms of the importance to the United Kingdom, but also unique in the fact that it is carrying out the will of 17.5 million people who voted directly—something that has never happened before in our history—so it was important to take the matter to the Supreme Court to get the full judgment. I give him this undertaking: I will do everything in my power to make sure that the measure goes through swiftly, and that while it is properly scrutinised, it is a simple and straightforward Bill that delivers the triggering of article 50 by 31 March.

Article 50

Debate between David Davis and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 7th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

As usual, I want to accommodate the enormous interest of the House in this important statement and will strive to do so, but I must say to the House that questions and answers must be brief from now on.

[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend recall that during the passage of the European Union Referendum Act 2015 the then Foreign Secretary, now the Chancellor, made it unequivocally clear that the purpose of the Bill that was being passed into law was to give to the British people the absolute right to decide whether we stayed in or left the European Union? At no stage was that unclear. Does my right hon. Friend therefore deplore all those, including 70 Opposition Members, who now say that that decision does not stand and that we should fight to stay in the EU regardless of the public’s decision?

[Mr Davis]

My right hon. Friend is quite right. The then Foreign Secretary said in terms to this House, “This is giving the decision to the British people.” The Government of the day also spent £9 million circulating a leaflet saying just that: the decision was the public’s to take and that the Government would implement it.

Parliamentary Scrutiny of Leaving the EU

Debate between David Davis and Iain Duncan Smith

Wednesday 12th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

I was just about to say that the hon. and learned Gentleman will remember from Monday that I reiterated the support for his standing as a lawyer.

[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

rose—

Next Steps in Leaving the European Union

Debate between David Davis and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 10th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

The hon. Lady is shouting, “What about our economy?” That is the answer: we want the most open barrier-free access to the European market. We have heard lots and lots of very unhelpful—misleading, frankly—comments about hard Brexit and soft Brexit. We want the best possible access terms, full stop. The best terms—that is it.

[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement, and urge him to resist the temptation of advice from a second-rate lawyer who does not even understand the parliamentary process? If he is to advise his opposite number, the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), he might remind him that the repeal of the European Communities Act 1972 will give many opportunities to amend and debate every single aspect of the discussions around the invoking of article 50. In case the hon. and learned Gentleman has not noticed, the Opposition have the device of Opposition days, when they can debate absolutely anything they choose, including the whole issue of the European Union. May I urge my right hon. Friend to get on with the process and not to listen to those who want to bog it down and never let it happen?

[Mr Davis]

With the mild exception of the rudeness about the legal qualifications of the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), I agree with everything my right hon. Friend has said. The simple truth is that the attempt to block article 50 is an attempt to block the will of the British people, full stop. There will be plenty of opportunity for debate in the next two and a half years, during discussions of the Act and the successor legislation, and any number of other debates between now and then.

Exiting the European Union

Debate between David Davis and Iain Duncan Smith

Monday 5th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

I thank the hon. Lady for her welcome. As I suspect is very common when people enter the Cabinet, I have received a very large number of congratulatory emails and telegrams. The best one was the shortest. It said, “Many congratulations, I now believe in the resurrection.” Let me deal with the measures she has raised.

The hon. Lady and the Labour party accuse us of rank incompetence—the Labour party! The Prime Minister, on her trip to China, described her approach to complex problems—this is certainly a complex problem. Her approach is to collect the data, analyse it, make a judgment, make a decision and implement it. The Labour party clearly does it the other way around. The Americans have a phrase for the way the Labour party approaches these things—not looking at the problem, not looking at the issue, not looking at the data. They call it “load, fire, aim”. That may be very appropriate for the circular firing squad that is the Labour party, but it is not appropriate to running things in the national interest.

The hon. Lady mentioned the points-based immigration system. What the Prime Minister said in China was very clear. She wants a results-based immigration system that delivers an outcome the British people voted for. That is what she will be delivering at the end of this.

The hon. Lady mentioned the Japanese ambassador. From memory, the Japanese ambassador this morning said something to the effect that he had not met a company that did not think Britain was the best place in Europe to have its business—not one. He also said that he admired the Prime Minister’s approach to the negotiation. The hon. Lady should pick her quotes a little more carefully.

Let me come to the hon. Lady’s central point, if there was a point in what she had to say. She talked about article 50. Before we entered on to this course, the referendum Bill went through this House. It was voted for 6:1 in this House, and she voted for it. What did the Bill say? It was presented by the then Foreign Secretary, who said that we were giving the British people the right to make the decision—it was not advice or consultation. What she is trying to wrap up in a pseudo-democratic masquerade is the most anti-democratic proposal I have heard for some time. She wants to deny the will of the British people and up with that we will not put.

[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s return to the Front Bench. As someone who recently left it—voluntarily, I have to tell him—I unreservedly welcome him. I also welcome his incredibly optimistic tone on the whole idea of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union and forging a new relationship with the rest of the world.

On the specifics of the statement—[Interruption.] The one specific is that we are leaving the European Union. On that specific, I wonder if I might press my right hon. Friend. In the media today, we have had a certain amount of speculation on the detail in terms of controlling our borders. Will he confirm that, in leaving the European Union, the No. 1 thing that is absolutely not negotiable is that the United Kingdom will take control of its borders and the laws relevant to that and that that is not negotiable in any other deal?

[Mr Davis]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question, and I would say two things. First, the referendum provided the biggest mandate ever given to a British Government, and the question of immigration clearly played a large part. Secondly, the Prime Minister has made it very plain that the current state of immigration cannot go on and that we will bring it to an end as part of this process.