Prime Minister’s Statement

Henry Smith Excerpts

Saturday 19th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

On the contrary. What this does is protect Northern Ireland by extracting Northern Ireland whole and entire from the EU customs union and allowing Northern Ireland to join the whole UK in setting our own tariffs. In so far as there may be checks at a few places in Northern Ireland, physical checks would involve only 1% of the goods coming in. If that is too much of a burden, it is open to the people of Northern Ireland, by a majority, to decide that they no longer wish to participate in those arrangements. It is being done by consent. It is a very, very ingenious scheme that gets Northern Ireland out of the customs union and allows the whole UK to do free trade together, with minimum bureaucracy.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

The British people are watching this place very carefully and history is recording what we say. The clear majority message from my constituents is that they want the Brexit they voted for delivered, and this deal does that. Can I have an assurance from the Prime Minister that we will not only maintain, but enhance, our environmental and animal welfare standards?

[The Prime Minister]

I can indeed give that assurance, and I can tell my hon. Friend, who campaigned to leave the EU for those reasons among others, we will indeed have higher standards of protection for animal welfare, the environment and other matters.