The Government's Plan for Brexit

David T C Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

He did. The outcome was catastrophic. I wrote 100 articles inveighing against the Maastricht treaty. Had we never signed up to the Maastricht treaty, we would not now be in this position. The right hon. Gentleman is not citing a precedent that augurs well for the negotiations that are to come.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

During those negotiations, did not John Major say,

“don’t bind my hands when I am negotiating”

with the European Union?

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

He did. He did not succeed in having his hands not bound, and I repeat that the result was a catastrophe.

--- Later in debate ---

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

Whether people like it or not, the referendum result gave the Government a very clear mandate to get Britain out of the European Union. It is extremely disappointing that some people are trying to frustrate the will of the people, whether it is hedge fund managers, with their money, taking cases to the High Court; Members of this House coming up with all sorts of reasons why they may not vote for article 50; or, closer to home for me, Members of the Welsh Assembly, who now seek to parley on equal terms with Ministers and to dictate to them the terms of our withdrawal from the European Union.

I know that Ministers will be polite to Welsh Assembly Ministers, but I hope they will remind them that they owe their existence to a referendum that had a much smaller turnout and a much narrower majority than the one that has delivered us the mandate for Brexit. I hope they will remind them that the people of Wales voted to leave the European Union and that the Welsh Labour party is not speaking for Wales when it comes to meet Ministers. I hope they will also remind Welsh Assembly Ministers from the Labour party that foreign affairs is not within their remit, and if they seek to come here and talk about foreign affairs, maybe it is time Welsh Members of Parliament were able to discuss Welsh Labour’s appalling record on the national health service and on education; as the programme for international student assessment results have shown, Labour has left us at the absolute bottom of the educational league.

We have an absolutely first-rate Prime Minister, who has the support of her Members of Parliament, and a first-rate set of Ministers. We cannot possibly have a negotiation that consists of 650 MPs, 800 or so Members of the House of Lords and a coven of Welsh Assembly Ministers. As John Major himself said, we need to unbind the hands of our Ministers and allow them to get out there into Brussels and negotiate the excellent deal that we know they can get, which will involve freedom of movement, freedom to trade and freedom to get back control of our borders and money. We look forward to celebrating that deal over the next two years. I am very proud to support my Government tonight.