European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Debate between Geoffrey Cox and Shailesh Vara

Tuesday 15th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Ind)]

Will the Attorney General give way?

[Mr Shailesh Vara (North West Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Will the Attorney General give way?

[The Attorney General]

I will in a minute.

Do we have before us—the withdrawal agreement—a sensible settling of these critical historical obligations for continuing transactions to resolve, for millions of people, the legal uncertainty of taking ourselves away from the highly integrated legal system in which we were organically linked and, indeed, part of? The 585 pages—

--- Later in debate ---

[The Attorney General]

I will in a moment.

The agreement settles the bills. It legally allows for the orderly completion of these thousands of continuing transactions—judicial proceedings, accounting procedures —that would otherwise be thrown into a legal void. It provides for a period of adjustment for people and for businesses of the next 21 months, extendable up to two years, to allow our businesses and our individual citizens to adjust to the new realities.

That is what I mean by the airlock. It is quite simple: an airlock enables the human body to adjust to the new pressure it will face when it exits the airlock. This period allows the transition and adjustment of this country to enter into the bright new world that we will enter when we leave the European Union. So I say to the House with all due diffidence and respect: we all of us would regard, would we not, these parts of the withdrawal agreement as essential to create the bridge for our departure from the European Union.

[Mr Vara]

My right hon. and learned Friend speaks of the legal complexities of the withdrawal agreement, and he also speaks of a coming together. May I refer him to the advice that he gave to the Prime Minister on 13 November in his capacity as Attorney General? On page 2, paragraph 8, he said:

“for regulatory purposes GB is essentially treated as a third country by NI for goods passing from GB into NI.”

How can he talk about coming together, while his own advice to the Prime Minister talks of anything but?

[The Attorney General]

I understand the force of what my hon. Friend says, but precisely the same prevails in numerous EU countries. For the purposes of regulation, the Canary Islands are treated as a third country to Spain. It is not for the purposes of regulation alone—single market regulations alone. There are examples all around the world of where there are regulatory differences between individual parts of the jurisdiction of sovereign states.