Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between David Davis and Jim Cunningham

Thursday 27th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. He crystallises the point on “no deal is better than a bad deal”, and he clearly demonstrates why the Labour proposal, apart from being completely impractical, would never be deliverable.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Can the Secretary of State guarantee regional aid for the west midlands after Britain leaves the EU? More importantly, we have a very fine candidate for the mayor’s job in the west midlands: Siôn Simon.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between David Davis and Jim Cunningham

Thursday 9th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

8. What steps he is taking to ensure that maintaining human rights protections is included in negotiations on the UK leaving the EU.

[The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Mr David Davis)]

The UK has a long-standing tradition of ensuring that our rights and traditional liberties are protected domestically and of fulfilling our international human rights obligations. The decision to leave the European Union does not change any of that. That is the approach we will take as we enter negotiations, and I can confirm that the Government have no plans to withdraw from the European convention on human rights.

[Mr Cunningham]

Given that answer, will the Secretary of State set out a full and detailed list of all fundamental rights currently guaranteed under EU law and what approach the Government intend to take towards them?

[Mr Davis]

We will be putting the great repeal Bill in front of the House at some point in the near future. That will carry into British law the existing law of the European Union and the case law that goes with it. But British human rights have not depended on the European Union; they have been intrinsic to our history and our tradition, and we—I most of all—will continue to defend them.

Shaker Aamer

Debate between David Davis and Jim Cunningham

Tuesday 17th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

It may say two things. The first—it saddens me to say this—is that President Obama may not be in complete control of his own country. After all, he promised to close down Guantanamo early on but then did not do so, at great political cost to himself and, indeed, to his moral standing. Secondly, when it comes down to it, America puts its own interests far ahead of those of any other country. That is the doctrine of American exceptionalism, which in one sense is understandable because it is based on freedom, but in another sense it leads to the almost colonial treatment of its allies. If that is the case, it is deplorable. As America’s longest-standing and strongest ally, we should expect special treatment, but we have clearly not been given it in this case.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Looking at the morality of this case, and bearing in mind the fact that America—and Britain, for that matter—have lectured the world on democracy and justice, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is not a very good example of American justice to have a person spend 13 years in prison without ever being charged with anything and being tortured? What does that say about the west, given the way in which we look at the rest of the world, and particularly the middle east?

[Mr Davis]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, which goes to the heart of what I was about to say in conclusion.

One of the great dimensions of our soft power in the world, which I used to come across all the time as a British Foreign Minister, was the expectation that we would behave differently from others and that we would not fall to the standards of the Soviet Union or of other totalitarian states. We were paid more attention as a result of that. It was less true of America, but it was true none the less. This whole exercise—involving Shaker Aamer, Binyam Mohamed and a whole series of others—shows that we have dropped from those high standards. We have fallen from the grace in which public opinion held us. Indeed, by behaving like the guy in the black hat rather than the guy in the white hat, we have essentially done what al-Qaeda would have liked us to do.

That is why I say that we have a duty to our own citizens in this matter just as much as we have a duty to Shaker Aamer. We are letting our citizens down as well as letting him down. We are betraying the standards that millions died to protect in two world wars over the past century, and we are increasing the risk of terrorism because this situation legitimises the kind of barbarous behaviour that we have seen too much of in the past few years. I shall finish by joining the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington in asking the Minister to give an undertaking that we will redouble our efforts and not give up until Shaker Aamer is returned to his family.