Oral Answers to Questions

Karin Smyth Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

I can absolutely do that. This Government are committed to ensuring that we deliver on leaving the European Union in a way that works for all people who live in the United Kingdom, wherever that may be, fully respecting the commitments that we have under the Belfast-Good Friday agreement.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

We do not have much time to find new technological solutions. In October, from the Dispatch Box, the Prime Minister said that

“technical solutions effectively involve moving the border—and it would still be a border. Some involve equipment, which could come under attack, and some involve a degree of state surveillance that, frankly, I think would not be acceptable in Northern Ireland.”—[Official Report, 15 October 2018; Vol. 647, c. 421.]

Does the Secretary of State agree with the Prime Minister?

[Karen Bradley]

If the hon. Lady had listened to my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, in his answer to the first question, it was clear that we have said as a Government that no technological solutions, off the shelf, exist today that solve this problem, but we are committed to working to find alternative arrangements because we have all agreed that the backstop, should it ever come into force, is a temporary measure. No one wants to be in it, and we want to find ways of avoiding it.