Oral Answers to Questions

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

As my hon. Friend will understand—he heard me say this earlier—we considered that in some detail before the Lancaster House speech. We concluded that it did not meet the requirements for which the British people voted and that it would not be as easy to negotiate as an alternative bespoke transitional arrangement might be.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

Now that the Secretary of State has accepted that there will need to be transitional arrangements, is it the Government’s policy that the UK will continue to make payments into the EU budget for that period, however long it lasts?

[Mr Davis]

I think this must be the 20th time I have said to the right hon. Gentleman that I am not going to negotiate from this Dispatch Box, and he should know that. What I will say to him is that the transitional arrangements as we have described are an implementation period—or phase, or any of all the other different words used for it—and are there for one purpose: to ensure, in his words, that we avoid a cliff edge. That is not just true of us: it is not just the UK that has come to this conclusion—some time ago as it turns out—but so have the other members of the European Union, and one of the things we have been doing in the past six to nine months is ensuring that they understand from their point of view precisely how valuable to them a transitional arrangement will be.