Business of the House

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

My hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning is taking this matter very seriously. I shall draw the hon. Gentleman’s concern to his attention, but I assure him that my hon. Friend is on top of the issue.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

The Leader of the House will be aware that paragraph 25 of the European Parliament’s draft motion on Brexit makes it clear that passporting for financial services will not be countenanced. Financial services are of key importance to Edinburgh and to many of my constituents who work in the sector. May we have a debate in Government time to hear how the UK Government intend to support our financial services organisations, which are facing serious disruptions?

[Mr Lidington]

I refer the hon. Lady to the Prime Minister’s letter yesterday, which made explicit mention of our objective of securing trade access for our financial services and, of course, reciprocal rights for financial services firms based in other European Union countries. The hon. Lady temps me to speculate about a forthcoming negotiation; as she knows, that is not something I am prepared to do.

Business of the House

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant]

I am grateful for that point. It is never a good idea to speculate about court cases here, especially if people have as little legal training as me, but those factors may well come back to haunt the Government in a big way.

The Prime Minister has given herself a political imperative to implement article 50 by 31 March.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle), will my hon. Friend join me in taking the opportunity to thank the democracy campaigners, particularly Gina Miller? Their actions and the interventions of the courts have meant that a Prime Minister who sought to ignore Parliament and treat the powers entrusted to her as an absolute privilege has been brought back into some sort of line. The campaigners’ contribution will have long-lasting effects on this issue and others.

[Peter Grant]

I concur with my hon. Friend’s comments. It is in extremely bad taste for anyone to bad-mouth the motivation of someone who has just won a court case. Someone who has won a case in the High Court and the Supreme Court was by definition right to bring it. The treatment that Gina Miller got after the High Court case was utterly shameful and I hope that there will be no repetition of it.

To come back to the matter in hand, I would like the Government to explain why they have taken this unusual procedural step today. Why is the Bill, possibly the shortest Bill we will consider during the Session, expected to attract so many amendments that the Clerks need extra time to collect them all?