Exiting the European Union

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Monday 10th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We did indeed listen to manufacturers in the West Midlands and up and down the country as we were putting the deal together. That desire to protect people’s jobs and livelihoods while respecting and delivering on the result of the referendum has underpinned the deal that we have, and this deal does exactly that.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister challenged others to be up front about what they want, but she needs to be up front, too, about the fact that it was her red lines that created the problem with the border in Northern Ireland, which led to the backstop and which has brought her to the House of Commons today in such a weak position. Given the answer that she gave a moment ago, will she tell the House whether, of the EU leaders that she spoke to over the weekend, there was a single one who indicated that they were prepared to renegotiate article 20 of the backstop protocol, because, in the absence of any such commitment, is not cancelling tomorrow’s vote merely postponing the inevitable?

[The Prime Minister]

The issue on which we were very clear with the European Union in relation to the Northern Ireland border was that there could not be a customs border down the Irish sea. In February, the EU’s proposals were that exactly that should happen. By October, we had persuaded it to enable a UK-wide customs territory to be in the protocol rather than a Northern Ireland-wide customs territory. That was the key issue in relation to the border that we had set as something that was unacceptable to the United Kingdom and we negotiated that out of the proposal.