Gregory Campbell
Main Page: Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry)Department Debates - View all Gregory Campbell's debates with the Northern Ireland Office
Windsor Framework
Gregory Campbell Excerpts(1 day, 9 hours ago)
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Hilary Benn
For my many and varied sins, I spent a number of years chairing the Brexit Select Committee. We looked at all of these things at great length, and I have to say to the hon. and learned Gentleman on the basis of that experience that nothing hoved into view that would address the central question: how to maintain an open border—one of the very few things that everybody agreed on during Brexit was that there could not be checks or infrastructure at the border, for reasons that all of us in the Chamber well understand—while ensuring, as a good neighbour, that the European Union can be confident that goods arriving in Northern Ireland, which could then move freely into the EU by crossing the border into the Republic, comply with the rules of its single market.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
The Secretary of State was elaborating on the problems we have to grapple with. Does he agree that there are just three ways of dealing with those problems? One is to ignore them in the hope that they will go away. The second is to keep complaining about them but not doing anything about them. The third is to actually work at resolving them, and that is what all of us, but principally His Majesty’s Government, should be doing.
Hilary Benn
I hope it will not come as a surprise to the hon. Gentleman if I say that I agree with him. Complaining and ignoring does not get us very far. He anticipates what I am about to come on to: the progress we have seen as a result of the Windsor framework.