EU Exit Negotiations

Debate between David Davis and Richard Drax

Tuesday 5th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

In response to the first half of the hon. Gentleman’s question, I recommend that he read Hansard for my statements here, which will prove that he is absolutely wrong. It is really quite a calumny.

As for the First Ministers, there is a body called the Joint Ministerial Committee, which includes representatives of all the devolved Administrations and meets regularly. Sadly, the Northern Ireland Executive are not there at the moment, which is one of the difficulties we have to deal with.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

We leave the EU in 16 months. Will my right hon. Friend assure the House and the country that the EU delegates are well aware that we are preparing to fall back on World Trade Organisation rules if negotiations fail?

[Mr Davis]

I think that that has been apparent for some time.

EU Exit Negotiations

Debate between David Davis and Richard Drax

Monday 13th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that uncertainty is the weapon of the EU Commission and the remainer? I urge him to stiffen his resolve to ensure the will of the British people is kept.

[Mr Davis]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. We see—how can I put this?—time pressure being played against us all the time, and we have to resist that properly.

EU Exit Negotiations

Debate between David Davis and Richard Drax

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

The Home Office is already working on that and we will be publishing a White Paper in due course and bringing a Bill to that effect before the House.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

The decision to leave the EU in its entirety has been made, and any other consequence will be a betrayal of that vote. Is it not right and logical that a no-deal option has to be on the table in the event that we are forced, through bad negotiation and lack of will on the other side, to stay in an organisation that we voted to leave?

[Mr Davis]

My hon. Friend’s point is entirely logical.

EU Exit Negotiations

Debate between David Davis and Richard Drax

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

If I can finish the sentence, perhaps he will get an answer. When I answered the question on the north-south border, I said that we were also concerned that Ireland’s access to its major market—ourselves—and to the European market through the Welsh ports would be at risk in a bad outcome, so we are absolutely dealing with that issue.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) has rather stolen my thunder, because I was going to ask a very similar question about business. What feedback is the Secretary of State getting from businesses across Europe that they want to continue trading with us? It seems to me that the bureaucrats do not and want to punish us, but the business community I speak to wants to do business and does not want tariffs. Is that the feedback he is receiving?

Legislating for UK Withdrawal from the EU

Debate between David Davis and Richard Drax

Thursday 30th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

Sometimes the Scottish National party seems to have one element in its ideology and one element only, and it is entitled “grievance”, and the maximisation of grievances. In the past six months, I have attended six meetings with the representatives of devolved Administrations. In a number of the policy areas that we have discussed and that made it into the previous White Paper—employment rights, environmental rights and a whole series of other areas like those—and on the agreement that we need to maintain the maximum possible access to trade for all parts of the kingdom, we have been in the same place. We have, of course, not been in the same place on every single element of policy. We said at the beginning that the DAs would not be given a veto, but would be very heavily consulted and involved in discussions, and that is precisely what we have done. The fact that the Scottish National party wants to claim that it is not happy about that is a matter for it, not for me or the facts.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

Those who wish to remain in the EU bang on about EU rules and regulations. Surely the whole point of leaving the EU is that we in this place can live under our own rules and regulations, which are suitable for us and not necessarily for 28 countries, as things currently stand.

[Mr Davis]

My hon. Friend is exactly right.

Article 50

Debate between David Davis and Richard Drax

Tuesday 24th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

If I remember correctly, the Supreme Court said of the Sewel convention that it was not for the judges to decide. I listened last week as the Scottish Government Minister presented at great length the arguments in their paper. As I said earlier to one of the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues, there are bits we disagree with and bits we absolutely agree with—for me, the most obvious one is the protection of employment law, which I take very seriously and on which we are absolutely in the same place. I and others on the Joint Ministerial Committee discussed with the Minister the issue of devolution, and the clear point was that no existing devolved powers were to be retracted. Of course, that is not going to happen, but we also have to think, in rational terms and in the interests of the Scottish people and citizens of the UK more widely, about where the best place is to make decisions. In most cases, I would prefer to devolve powers, but in some circumstances that is not practical. We have to do what is right for the people, not what suits our political interest.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

I am confident that every Member will vote to trigger article 50—for which of us would dare thwart the will of the people? Does my right hon. Friend share my concern, though, about the implications of the case for a Government’s decision to go to war, for example? Could that now be challenged by a member of the public?

New Partnership with the EU

Debate between David Davis and Richard Drax

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

Well done the Prime Minister; well done my right hon. Friend. Does he share my optimism that access to the European markets will not be affected by our departure? The millions of European workers will not allow their politicians or their bureaucrats to threaten their livelihoods simply to punish the United Kingdom.

[Mr Davis]

I am sure my hon. Friend is right and I particularly like the opening part of his question.

Article 50

Debate between David Davis and Richard Drax

Monday 7th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am not sure that the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) yelling “Answer” from a sedentary position quite constitutes the sort of knightly behaviour that we have come to expect of him.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

If the courts have banged their metaphorical gavel on our prerogative powers, does my right hon. Friend share my concern that they may do so again regarding, for example, a decision to go to war?

[Mr Davis]

One—but not the only—reason why we are taking this to the Supreme Court is to get an absolutely specific outcome and answer.

Next Steps in Leaving the European Union

Debate between David Davis and Richard Drax

Monday 10th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

The simple answer is this. Throughout the entire referendum campaign, I was trying to think through not so much the retention of the European market, but how we best develop the international markets. Those were my thoughts at that time and, as a Back Bencher, I was entirely entitled to have those thoughts.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

Airbus is a wonderful example of European co-operation. The fuselages are built in France and Germany, and the wings in this country. Does my right hon. Friend agree that any politician or bureaucrat who tried to punish such a project, which has created so much wealth and prosperity and so many jobs, would be mad, bad or totally out of touch with the people they professed to represent?

[Mr Davis]

I would simply add one other word. They would be not mad or bad, but simply unwise.

Exiting the European Union

Debate between David Davis and Richard Drax

Monday 5th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

When the United Kingdom leaves the European Union, the common travel area will continue.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend to his post.

The fishing industry, not least in Scotland, was once a proud and large industry envied around the world. Many of my fishermen constituents see leaving the EU as a huge opportunity. Will he reassure them, other fishermen and potential new fishermen around the United Kingdom that fishing will be very high on his list of priorities, including potentially taking the 200-mile limit back?

[Mr Davis]

One group I have met already is fishermen. The answer to my hon. Friend’s initial question about priority is yes. What form that takes depends on the interests of our fishermen. Because they have interests in other waters, I will not say yes to his second question, but on priority, the answer is yes, absolutely.

Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between David Davis and Richard Drax

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Commons Chamber

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

I think that 10 years ago I would have opposed the Bill, because I would have taken the conventional view that has been expressed by one or two Government Members today. The last decade, however, has led me to believe that the chasm that has grown between the political classes and the ordinary voters—the population of the country—has become too wide. Some of that has, of course, been due to the expenses crisis, but it is by no means either the only or the first reason. As my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) pointed out, the current trend has been ongoing for a long time, but I believe that it is now approaching a crisis point.

I have therefore concluded that a recall Bill is necessary, and, like the hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell), I shall vote for this Bill, although I must add that I do not view it as a recall Bill. If anything, it is a parliamentary expulsion Bill, because it makes it easy for the establishment of the House to expel someone from the House. Let us imagine the circumstances. A Member is found wanting by his peers in the Standards and Privileges Committee—no doubt amid a vast hue and cry from a number of tabloid and red-top newspapers—and his constituents are then told “If 10% of you vote in the referendum, this man will go.” No matter that 90% of them might want him to stay; in those torrid circumstances, only 10% need to vote, and he will be expelled. I do not think that anyone who was criticised and set up in that way would survive the process, or would be reselected by his party thereafter. He might stand on his own account like Dick Taverne, like the hon. Member for Clacton, or indeed like me, but he would not survive the normal political process. This is, as I have said, a mechanism for political expulsion.

I might find that tolerable if our mechanisms in the House met any sort of judicial test, but, having been here for some 25 years, I suggest Members conduct an experiment. I say this with no ill reflection on the people who serve on and chair the Standards and Privileges Committee. I suggest that Members make a list of the names of all who have been ruled against by the Committee, separate them into two columns consisting of Front Benchers and Back Benchers—I do not suggest that the two columns should consist of those who are within the gilded circle and those who are the mavericks—and compare the treatments of people who have committed the same crime. They will then find two classes of justice. We do not deliver justice in this House; we deliver an opinion of the establishment of the House, and that is why the public are not wrong to view our systems as intolerable.

Let me give one example. I shall not give the examples of those who have been let off, because that might be mean in the circumstances, but I will give an example of someone who, in my view, was very badly treated. It was someone who was no friend of mine and, indeed, no friend of almost anyone in the House: Ken Livingstone. About a decade ago, he received income from a series of speaking engagements. He went to the Registrar of Members’ Financial Interests and asked how he should declare that income, and he then declared it in the way the Registrar recommended. Later, someone found out how much money he had made. I think that it was more than £100,000, but in any case it was a lot of money. He was then suddenly hauled before the Standards and Privileges Committee, and forced to make an apology here in the Chamber. Why? He was an outsider. He was a maverick. He had no friends in the House, or at least no friends in the parties in the House. His was not the only case of that kind—I could have picked a number of others—but that was not justice, it was not democracy, and it would not improve this House to formalise such a process by means of the mechanism with which the Minister has presented us today.

Such a system could be made to work only if we replaced the standards and privileges process with a judicial process. I do not think that the House really wants to introduce the law into its mechanisms, but if it wants to adopt a test it will have to be a judicial test. I suspect that, if I were ever in front of the Standards and Privileges Committee, I would be looking for a judicial remedy immediately. So this is not a recall Bill as it stands; it is a parliamentary expulsion Bill, and we should understand that.

I support the proposals made by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), who has been a principled campaigner for these reforms for some time. I shall not take up much more of the House’s time, but I want to remind hon. Members of the differences involved. The Government’s proposal would take either a criminal mechanism or the House’s judgment and turn it into a one-off, 10% referendum. Then it would be over. My hon. Friend’s proposal would have a 5% first threshold to start the process. That would trigger the timetable, and a 20% threshold would follow. In my constituency, that would equate to just short of 15,000 voters. I have never seen a campaign in my constituency get 15,000 voters to go out voluntarily and put their name on a petition.

[Richard Drax]

I am listening carefully to my right hon. Friend. If, as a result of such a referendum, a political scalp were gained and a seat lost, does my right hon. Friend agree that supporters of an opposing party would get out and vote, as they would at a general election? I accept that the numbers would be down, but there could still be significant numbers voting. The numbers that he is talking about would certainly be possible if a seat could be gained in that way.

[Mr Davis]

This point has been made a number of times, particularly by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)but also by others. My hon. Friend is presuming that his constituents would vote on the basis of a simple political judgment, according to whether they wanted a Labour Government, a Tory Government, a Liberal Government or even a UKIP Government, but I do not believe that our constituents behave like that. I believe that they behave in a moral way and make judgments about us. I have discussed this matter with my constituents. Many of those who have never voted for me in my 20-odd years in the constituency would not vote to remove me on that basis. They would not make such a judgment on a political basis. They would recognise that this was a quasi-judicial judgment. That is why we are better off trusting the public than trusting the hierarchy in this House.