Oral Answers to Questions

Ed Davey Excerpts

Tuesday 1st October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend has made an important point: it is in everyone’s interests—ours and our European friends and partners—that we reach a deal. Intensive negotiations are going on, both with the Irish Government and with other European partners, and there is a very strong recognition that it is in all our interests that we reach a deal.

[Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

Is the Chancellor aware that the Office for Budget Responsibility’s alarming fiscal analysis of a no-deal Brexit assumes that the Government’s preparations are successful—and so result in a miraculously benign no-deal Brexit—and that even with this least-damaging no-deal Brexit the OBR predicts a hit to Britain’s finances that would destroy every single spending announcement by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor? Given that, is it not unacceptable for a Chancellor in a Government publicly contemplating a no-deal Brexit to fail to tell the truth to the British public that spending on health, schools and police will be slashed in the event of a no-deal Brexit?

[Sajid Javid]

First, I do not recognise that picture at all. It has been made up by the Liberal Democrats. Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman talks about what is unacceptable. What is unacceptable is for the Liberal Democrats to pretend that the referendum on the European Union never happened.