Leaving the EU: Customs

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

Call me old-fashioned, but what is wrong with the House having papers, presentations and economic analyses on the Government’s post-Brexit preferred customs arrangements, including a customs partnership and maximum facilitation? What is wrong with that? What we have is a Government who are waiting, like Mr Micawber, for something to turn up. That is what it is.

The hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) asked why we have this Humble Address motion before us. I will tell him why: it is because this Parliament is getting stitched up and gagged by the Tories. They would not allow amendments to the law in the Finance Bill. They have threatened the House of Lords. They have statutory instruments coming out of their ears and ministerial diktats will follow. That is why we have this motion. The hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Paul Masterton) told us that this Humble Address was a Mickey Mouse motion. Well, I tell you what: Mickey Mouse is 80 years old this year and he is a well-respected, popular icon—respected by generations and millions of people. If this is a Mickey Mouse Humble Address, I will have them every single day.

The hon. Member for Gordon (Colin Clark) said, “Get on with it,” but what are we supposed to be getting on with? The Government do not actually know. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury South (Mr Lewis) said that this is a shambles, that we are a laughing stock, and he is absolutely spot on. The hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) said that we are undermining our negotiating position. Well, we do not have a negotiating position, so how can we undermine something that we do not have? It was particularly bizarre.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) talked about the threat to manufacturing in her constituency, which the Government do not care about. It is as simple as that. The hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Ross Thomson) referred to Adam Smith and “The Wealth of Nations”. Let me remind him that before “The Wealth of Nations” came “The Theory of Moral Sentiments”. Well, there is nothing moral in what this Government are doing on this particular issue. There is secrecy, intrigue and furtiveness, and there is nothing moral about that whatsoever.

As for the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke), what we want to know is: what did he have in his right pocket? Was it a Rubik’s cube or a redacted Brexit Sub-Committee minute? Get it out and let us have a look. The hon. Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) mumbled something and then sat down. I think some of his hon. Friends should have done exactly the same thing and we might have been able to move on. The hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) said that we need to take time to get it right. Well, we do not have the time because the Government have been dragging their feet for a year or more.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) said the Government were in chaos, and she was absolutely spot on. The hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) said she wanted to deliver a sensible Brexit—well, get on with it then! We will join them, if they do want to deliver a sensible Brexit, but there is no suggestion they do. My hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Jo Platt) called it shambolic, and it is shambolic. It is as simple as that. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Frith) said there was nothing heroic about putting people out of work, and he was absolutely spot on. My hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Ruth George) said the Government were not listening, which sums it up, and we are losing business because of it.

In contemporary parlance, the Prime Minister is “shook”—totally unable to stand up to the right-wing press and back the only sensible way forward, which is Labour’s plan for a customs union. That is what we want. Instead, the Cabinet has been offered two options to decide between. First, we have what the Prime Minister calls a customs partnership. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) has mentioned, this partnership would require UK officials to collect tariffs on behalf of the EU for any goods coming to the UK that are travelling onward to an EU state. As hon. Members have said, the Prime Minister’s plan has been described as “crazy” by the Foreign Secretary and as having “significant question marks” by the Environment Secretary, while HMRC sources have called it “unviable” and suggested that Ministers are “having a laugh”.

Perhaps the Minister can clarify: is the Prime Minister’s preferred option “crazy” or merely “unviable”? It cannot be forgotten that HMRC resources have been decimated, with staffing and resourcing slashed by 17% since 2010. Nevertheless, the Government now think it appropriate to use what little resource is left to protect the EU’s customs union for it, without the UK receiving the full economic benefits. This feels like the worst of all worlds.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that even if the Prime Minister can persuade her divided Cabinet and then the EU negotiators to accept one or other of those two proposals, neither would be ready before the end of the transition period? Is it not therefore time for the Government finally to admit that we will be remaining in a customs union with the EU for some time to come?

[Peter Dowd]

That is a fair assessment from my right hon. Friend.

As Members have mentioned already, we have been told by the Brexit Secretary that:

“Faced with intractable problems with political pressure for a solution, the government reaches for a headline grabbing high-tech ‘solution’. Rather than spend the resources, time and thought necessary to get a real answer, they naively grasp solutions that to the technologically illiterate ministers look like magic.”

It is not me who is suggesting that the Brexit Secretary has not acquired the technical prowess to rocket us into this scientific utopia; it is the Brexit Secretary himself. The Government’s search for a magical fix to questions of such seriousness as the Northern Irish border leads us to believe that it is now in the public interest for Parliament itself to scrutinise the two options proposed by the Prime Minister. To do so, we must have access to the necessary information: in this case, the information contained in the papers, presentations and analyses provided to the Cabinet on each of these proposals.

Labour’s position is clear. We would negotiate a customs union that would ensure a strong and collaborative future relationship with the EU, deliver the exact same benefits as we currently have with members of the single market and customs union, ensure the fair management of migration in the interests of the economy and communities, defend the rights of workers and environmental protections, prevent a race to the bottom, protect national security and our capacity to tackle cross-border crime and deliver for all the regions. Let us then expose the Government’s total failure to reach a feasible negotiating position and in the process move one step forward to the goal of a new customs union with the EU, which is a position, I suspect, that is backed by Members across the House and one that meets all the key conditions of a final exit settlement.

Syria

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that it must be the UK Government who determine UK foreign policy. We must not hand over our foreign policy to a Russian veto. It is absolutely essential that we determine our foreign policy; the Foreign Office, of course, is a key part of delivering that.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

There are many who support the principle of humanitarian protection and what it achieved in Kosovo and Sierra Leone, and who recognise what its absence cost in Rwanda and, indeed, Syria. Of course we must uphold the international prohibition on the use of chemical weapons but, as someone who supported military action against Daesh in Syria in the vote in December 2015, I say gently to the Prime Minister that she should have come first to the House before committing our forces to action. Therefore, may I ask her to give us an assurance that in the event—heaven forbid—that President Assad chooses to use chemical weapons against innocent civilians once again, she will come to Parliament first, she will share such evidence as she can with us, as she has done today, and she will trust Parliament to decide what is to be done?

[The Prime Minister]

I set out in my statement the basis on which we took this decision. I recognise the importance and significance of Parliament and of Parliament being able to make its views known on these issues, but it is also important that the Government are able to act. There will always be circumstances in which it is important for the Government to be able to act and, for the operational security of our armed forces, to be able to do so without a debate having taken place in Parliament. There will be circumstances where that is the case, and the Government have consistently set that out. If those are the circumstances, as I have said, it is right that the Prime Minister comes to Parliament at the earliest opportunity.

In relation to potential future action, as I said in response to the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable), this was a targeted attack. It was targeted at degrading the chemical weapons capability of the Syrian regime. We now look, alongside that, to undertake international work through diplomatic and political channels to ensure that we reinforce the international norm of not using chemical weapons. Nobody should be in any doubt about our resolve to ensure that we do not see a situation developing in which the use of chemical weapons is normalised.

Syria

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) on having made this application for an emergency debate and on the passion she showed in her speech—a passion she has shown over many years in pursuit of principle.

There will not be any victors in the war in Syria; there are only victims—the 400,000 or so whose lives have been lost and the many others whose lives have been changed by the injuries they have suffered. More than half the population have been forced to flee their homes, which have been destroyed, and large parts of the country have been laid waste. We all, without any equivocation, support the upholding of the convention on the prohibition of chemical weapons, and I am sure that the House would support effective action to stop their use—we shall see whether the action taken on Saturday has a deterrent effect on President Assad—but as I said in my question to the Prime Minister, I genuinely believe that if military action is to be taken in these circumstances, it must be Parliament’s decision, not the Cabinet’s. If we do not get Parliament’s support, I do not think we will win the support of the public and give our decisions the greatest force they could have.

Why does that matter? First, ever since the vote on Iraq in 2003—I had forgotten about the Falklands vote, to which the Father of the House referred—Parliament has been asked to approve the commitment of UK forces to action: in Libya in 2011, Iraq in 2014 and Syria in 2015. That gives me the opportunity gently to point out that, two and a bit years after we took that decision, following the combined effort, on the ground by the Iraqi forces and the Kurds in the main, with the support of a number of countries from the air, more than 3 million people have been liberated from the cruel rule of Daesh, which committed genocide, war crimes and many other things. Parliament rejected both motions on Syria in 2013, although in the retelling of that story the House needs to remember that either of those resolutions, had they been carried, could have resulted in military action against Assad for the use of chemical weapons. If it was right to seek Parliament’s approval then, in respect of exactly the same country and exactly the same issue—the use of chemical weapons on innocent Syrian civilians—it was right to have done so last week, for exactly the same reasons.

The second reason I argue that Parliament should have taken the decision is that military action is never without risk, particularly in this case given the number of states that have become directly involved in the Syrian conflict. I freely confess that the temperament of the current occupant of the White House, who shows little if any understanding of the responsibilities he holds as the President of the United States, made me worry last week very considerably about the consequences of what he might do. I also freely admit that those worries have since been considerably assuaged by the targeted nature of the strikes and the great care taken to ensure that there was no collateral damage, physical or diplomatic, while seeking undoubtedly to damage Syria’s chemical weapons capacity.

By definition, there are no easy choices and no certainty in the response to this conflict. There is also no shortage of advice on what we should not be doing. Earlier today, in Parliament Square, we saw the placards that appear from time to time, bearing the words “Don’t Bomb Syria”. I say from time to time because their appearance is somewhat erratic. I have never seen those placards, or reports of their appearance, outside the Russian embassy—or, indeed, the Syrian embassy while it was still open prior to 2014—although Russia and, in particular, Syria have been bombing Syrian civilians for years. Selective silence in the face of brutality is neither principled nor a policy.

Then there is the issue of humanitarian protection. If we accept the argument that no action to protect civilians can ever be undertaken or will ever have any legitimacy unless it has been authorised by the United Nations Security Council, we will have accepted that the use of a veto by any one of the five permanent members will prevent the taking of any unilateral action to protect human beings in need. I want the United Nations to work, and I want the Security Council to do its job, but the question for the House is whether the Security Council’s decisions—or the lack of them—can always be the end of the matter.

As we heard earlier from my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), who is no longer in the Chamber, we should remember the no-fly zone in northern Iraq. The Kurds were profoundly grateful for what this country did to prevent them from being bombed from the air. We should think of the action that we took in Kosovo, or the action that we took in Sierra Leone. If I were asked whether I thought that we were doing the right thing at the time, I would say yes. Would we have been wrong—I use the word “we” in the collective sense, meaning the world—to intervene in, say, Srebrenica or Rwanda to prevent the massacres? No, we would not, and it is to our eternal shame that we, as the world, failed to do so.

To the charge of selectivity, which has some force, I simply respond that the fact that we cannot do the right thing everywhere has never struck me as a very good argument for not trying to do the right thing somewhere. The truth is that airstrikes will not end this civil war, and they may not stop the use of chemical weapons. I therefore strongly agree with my hon. Friend that we need to reflect on the situation in which we find ourselves, and ask how we got here and how we can be more effective in the future.

We have been here before. The United Nations was created out of the ashes of the second world war because the world wanted to do better. In 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted and proclaimed the universal declaration of human rights. Article 3 states:

“Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”

Article 28 states:

“Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.”

Yet for millions of people in Syria, those rights, so nobly expressed all those years ago, have remained only words on paper—because they have lacked the means to protect themselves and their families from the attacks being made on them, because we have lacked the will to act or have acted imperfectly, or because some have chosen to look the other way and to pass by on the other side of the road. I believe that we all support the principles of the universal declaration of human rights, but we should ask ourselves how we are to uphold them in practice. They mean something—they are the ultimate expression of our responsibility for one another—yet we live in a world in which they cannot be fully realised. Let us imagine for a moment a United Kingdom in which there was peace and stability in London, genocide in Manchester, and civil war in Leeds. We would not regard that as in any way acceptable. We live in a country where it is not the case, because we have established the rule of law and democracy, but we live in a world where it is the case.

What are we discussing here? We are discussing how we fashion the means, collectively, through the United Nations, to ensure that those rights and principles are applied to all our fellow citizens.

The reason why this matters is that now, at the beginning of the 21st century, more than at any other time in human history, our relationships are defined by our interdependence. There are those who argue—I have heard them: “It is not our problem; it is not our business. We really feel sorry for them, but there’s nothing we can do about it.” The truth is that we live with the consequence of this in our minds, in the shame or concern we feel, and also in respect of refugees. My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South made that point extremely forcefully, because that is a consequence of allowing conflict to happen that is not brought to an end. We cannot shut the door and close the curtains and wish that what is happening in other countries will go away.

It was out of this concern that the idea of the responsibility to protect was born—developed by the Canadian Government, adopted by the world summit. In 2009, following Ban Ki-moon’s report, the UN General Assembly adopted its first resolution on the subject. It was based on the simple but important idea that state sovereignty is a privilege, but it also comes with a responsibility. The responsibility to protect is concerned with preventing genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

Of course, that responsibility is not without controversy. Some argue that the nation state should be sovereign, and some object to military action in all circumstances. Others say its scope is too narrow or that we have been selective or inconsistent in how we have chosen to act in the world, and I freely grant that that is the case. But the answer is to make the system work more effectively, and I want that system to be the UN. It has a unique responsibility because of its authority and legitimacy, but it is not always capable of acting. That is why the question of the veto and whether that will in all circumstances stop us doing something is so important. I commend to the House the initiative the previous French Government took to try to persuade the five permanent members of the Security Council to agree that they would forgo the veto in circumstances where there were war crimes—crimes against humanity, genocide.

I am the first to recognise the difficulty of trying to persuade countries to do that in those circumstances, but it was, and is, an attempt to deal with the conundrum we are facing. One has only to read the list of the UN Security Council resolutions that have been vetoed or threatened with vetoes or the list of the resolutions on Syria that have been passed, including at least three that call for ceasefires. We do not want in this conflict for resolutions, even passed by the UN Security Council, which call for a ceasefire.

The second issue is how we build diplomatic and public pressure and capacity to act. We know that one of the most powerful forces for action is bearing witness to what has happened—those who risk their lives to go and report on what has occurred. That is why President Assad is so anxious to kill those who are reporting and the doctors who say, “Why have so many hospitals in Syria been bombed?”

We must also acknowledge that we live in a world in which fake news is becoming ever more common. We used to call it lies. It is lies, but for a purpose; it is about sapping morale, undermining understanding and preventing people from acting.

I make this argument because the truth is that we have been here before, and we will be here again unless we can build a better system for stopping conflict before we get to this point. Let us be honest: in relation to this conflict, the chances are that President Assad is going to win, although what he will do with his country—which he, more than anyone else, has been responsible for destroying—I have no idea whatever.

In conclusion, I simply say that we can debate particular action at particular times and we hope it will have a beneficial effect, but the truth of this tragedy is that we can, and we must as a world, do much better.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

European Council

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

This is obviously an issue on which my right hon. Friend has campaigned, and continues to campaign, with great passion and dedication. As he will know, coming out of the national security capability review, we have set out the modernising defence programme. We are looking carefully at the question of our future defence against the background of the threats that we face. Of course, defence and national security covers more than simply what would traditionally be regarded as defence, but we are looking carefully at the capabilities required by the Ministry of Defence.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

My apologies to the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), who has migrated backwards from his usual seat.

[Hilary Benn]

Only temporarily.

[Mr Speaker]

It is only a temporary move.

[Hilary Benn]

The United Kingdom is a world leader in aerospace defence and satellite systems. Can the Prime Minister clarify whether the attempts that the European Commission is apparently making to freeze British companies out of Galileo contracts that are due to be issued in June are consistent with the transitional arrangements? If not, what does she propose to do about it?

[The Prime Minister]

We have been very clear that as long as we are a member of the European Union, we will meet our obligations, but we should continue to be treated as a full member of the European Union. As the Business Secretary has said, the UK has a world-leading space sector that has contributed a significant amount of specialist expertise to the Galileo programme. We believe it is not just in the UK’s interests for us to continue to participate in that programme as we have done, but also in the interests of the European Union, because of the expertise the United Kingdom can provide.

Salisbury Incident

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Wednesday 14th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely correct that we need to address this issue in that wider sense, because it is about the way in which the Russian state is acting—it believes, with impunity—in a whole variety of ways, and the way in which it is flouting the international rules-based order. We must come together as allies to ensure that we support that international rules-based order and that we have not just a collective agreement, but a collective approach that ensures that we can challenge what Russia is doing. He is also right that one of the points we should be making to our allies is that while this may have happened in the United Kingdom, it could be happening in any of those states.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

I join others in welcoming the measures that the Prime Minister has announced today. As Russia has chosen to act against us in such an outrageous way, we have to demonstrate our determination to defend ourselves. Given that Russia’s usual response is to deny all responsibility for such actions, does she intend, as well as seeking the assistance of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in identifying the sample, to ask for that organisation to carry out an investigation, as any member state is entitled to do, including an inspection of any facilities or locations in Russia, where this nerve agent in all probability was produced?

[The Prime Minister]

We will be talking to the OPCW about not just the ways in which the sample of the nerve agent used here in the United Kingdom can be independently verified, but other actions the OPCW might be able to take.

UK/EU Future Economic Partnership

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Monday 5th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I can reassure my right hon. Friend that we will be leaving in March 2019 and that we continue to work on all scenarios to ensure that we are ready.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

Although the Prime Minister’s speech provided some welcome additional detail on her view of the future partnership, the Irish Foreign Minister, Simon Coveney, said yesterday that she had not done so when it comes to

“maintaining a largely invisible border on the island of Ireland.”

Regardless of the means that she has in mind for achieving that, is she able today to give a guarantee to businesses in Northern Ireland and the Republic that their manufactured goods and agricultural products will be able to cross the border without checks, controls or infrastructure when we leave the European Union?

[The Prime Minister]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s opening remark in which he said that I had provided more detail in the speech I gave on Friday. He might like to have a discussion with the Leader of the Opposition about the fact that there was such detail in the speech.

We will not return to a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. We want that free flow of goods, services and people to be able to continue—of course we are committed to the common travel area—and we also want the free flow of goods, services and people between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. That is why we took the position that we did on the proposal that came forward last week from the European Commission. That would have meant a border down the Irish sea, which is unacceptable.

Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland: Border Arrangements

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I have not had the pleasure of reading that particular report from the European Parliament yet, but I shall certainly add it to my reading list. What my right hon. Friend has just said is evidence that there are people here, as well as in the Brussels institutions and the 27 national Governments of our EU partners, who are keen to work constructively together to find an outcome that brings benefits to us all.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

Instead of complaining that the draft withdrawal agreement published this morning proposes to keep Northern Ireland in the customs union and subject to the single energy market and to EU rules on the environment and agriculture, is it not time that Ministers finally accepted that it is their continuing failure to explain how they are going to keep an open border while leaving the customs union and the single market that is the cause of this problem? When will they explain how they propose to achieve that?

[Mr Lidington]

I draw the right hon. Gentleman’s attention to the fact that last December’s joint report contains three options to ensure that there will be no hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. The first—which the Government of Ireland and this Government are strongly committed to and want to see as the option that we are able to deliver—is the one that settles this matter in the context of the overall future economic partnership between the UK and the European Union. We are looking forward to beginning the negotiating process that I hope will start after the publication today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I know that this is an issue of concern to many Members of the House. I was pleased, a matter of weeks ago, to meet Father Daniel from Nineveh and Idlib, who talked about the very real persecution that his congregation were suffering and had suffered in the past. He presented me with a bible that was burnt; it had been rescued when a church had been set on fire. This is a real issue. All our aid is distributed on the basis of need in order to ensure that civilians are not discriminated against on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion. We are working with Governments, the international community and the United Nations to support the rights of minorities and to ensure that our aid reaches those in need. We will, of course, further explore what more support we can give to ensure that we address the persecution of religious minorities.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister will be aware that all free trade agreements involve some customs checks and, therefore, infrastructure at frontiers, which would be completely incompatible with maintaining an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. As the Cabinet Sub-Committee will apparently finally get around to discussing this today, will the Prime Minister explain to the House why she is so opposed to the UK remaining in a customs union with the EU? Not only would this be better for the British economy than a vague “deep and special partnership”—whatever that is—but it would help to ensure that that border remains as it is today, which is what we all want.

[The Prime Minister]

The United Kingdom is leaving the European Union. That means that we are leaving the single market and the customs union. If we were a full member of the customs union, we would not be able to do trade deals around the rest of the world. And we are going to have an independent trade policy and do those deals. The right hon. Gentleman asks about customs arrangements. Well, I suggest that he looks at the paper published by the Government last summer.

Carillion

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am sure that the people of Woodford Green would prefer to be known as the residents of Woodford Green rather than of Wood Green, and it may be that the residents of Wood Green would rather be known to reside in Wood Green than in Woodford Green.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State confirm that all annual fee payments made thus far by public authorities to Carillion in respect of private finance initiative contracts will now cease and that the liquidator will not be allowed to sell any of those contracts on to anyone else, so that there will not be a reward in the hands of others for the failures of this company?

European Council

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Monday 18th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point from the point of view of business. Significantly, it was accepted at the December Council not only that there should be such an implementation period, which in fact reflects the guidelines set out by the EU Council last April, but that we would start negotiating that very soon. We are looking to have those negotiations concluded in the first quarter of next year.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

On 10 December, the Brexit Secretary described the phase 1 joint agreement as

“more a statement of intent than it was a legally enforceable thing.”

However, last Friday’s European Council guidelines state:

“negotiations in the second phase can only progress as long as all commitments undertaken during the first phase are respected in full and translated faithfully into legal terms as quickly as possible.”

Can the Prime Minister therefore confirm that all the commitments she made in the phase 1 joint agreement, including in respect of the border in Northern Ireland, will be written into UK law?

[The Prime Minister]

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, there will now be a process of completing some of the details behind the withdrawal agreement such that the withdrawal agreement can then be put to this House, to this Parliament and to the European Parliament. We have always been clear that there will be a meaningful vote for this House. Subsequently, as we have stated to the House, we will have the EU withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill, which will put the various provisions of the withdrawal agreement legally into UK law. That was a key element in relation to citizens’ rights in the phase 1 negotiations.