New Partnership with the EU

Keir Starmer Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. The speech that the Prime Minister has just made is the most important she has ever given. It was about the future of our relationship with the EU and our position in the world. The place for such a speech is here, at the Dispatch Box. That is not just a convention; it is so that MPs across the House can question the Prime Minister on their constituents’ behalf about her plans for their future, and there are many questions.

For many months Labour has been demanding the fullest possible access to the single market, emphasising the risks of leaving the customs union, arguing for a collaborative relationship with our EU partners, and emphasising the need for transitional arrangements and to entrench workers’ rights. Today the Prime Minister has rightly accepted those in her plan, and I acknowledge that, but she has given little detail about how that is to be achieved, and there are some unanswered questions and big gaps. In truth, it is a half-in, half-out plan.

Let me give an example. The Prime Minister says that she does not want the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, but she wants a comprehensive trade agreement. Sooner or later, she and others will have to face up to the fact that any such agreement will have a disputes resolution clause, and that will have to be independent of this country; it will not be by reason and resolution in the High Court in London according to English law. She has avoided fronting up to some of these essential questions.

If the Prime Minister achieves all that she has set out to achieve, she will fall far short of the hard Brexit that many businesses and trade unions have feared—the Brexit of no deal, a bare trade agreement, out of any customs union and at arm’s length from our EU relations. It is good that she has ruled out that hard Brexit at this stage. However, as she knows, setting out ambitions is the easy bit; delivery is much more difficult. She is taking the precarious course of taking the UK out of single market membership and changing the customs arrangements. That will cause concern to businesses, as the Secretary of State knows, and trade unions. The Prime Minister should have been more ambitious.

However, I accept that form follows function, so let me set out in terms what Labour will hold the Prime Minister to account for, as far as trade is concerned: tariff-free access to the single market; access to the single market unencumbered by impediment—that is what was in the exchange of letters with Nissan, and it is what all businesses want, and what all trade unions want for those dealing in goods and services; alignment of regulatory bodies to avoid dual bureaucracy or, worse, divergence; and a deal that works for goods and services. That is the test we set out today, the test we will return to throughout the negotiations, and the test to be applied when a deal is reached. That is why the concession on a vote at the end of the negotiations is significant. We have been demanding that for months, and it has not been given before today. It is significant because it means that we can ensure that those tests are met throughout the process and at the end.

The sting in the tail in this morning’s plan was the threat to destroy the economic model that has been in place for many decades if that ambition is not reached. That is a very serious threat. That model—a shared model on which there has been consensus for decades across this House—is designed to share prosperity, protect workers’ rights and improve living standards. There is no mandate for reckless disregard of that model and of so much of what this country stands for. The Prime Minister described that as resulting in self-harm for the EU. It would be an act of huge self-harm for the UK to abandon the economic model that we have had in place for so many years. It is also totally inconsistent with any meaningful commitment to workers’ rights and a fairer society. That threat—that sting in the tail—undermines the ambition in the plan that I recognise.

Let me touch on wider issues. The UK and the EU have hugely benefited from our collaborative work in the fields of criminal justice, anti-terrorism, research, medicine, science, technology, arts and culture, and much else. We should be seeking to preserve that collaboration, not destroy it, yet the Prime Minister said today:

“We do not seek to hold onto bits of membership as we leave.”

Let me give some examples of the bits that she should seek to retain—

[Mr Speaker]

Well, not many and not for long. [Interruption.] Order. The hon. Gentleman is a learned, celebrated and cerebral individual, and I do not want to interrupt him, but the convention is that the reply is normally half the length of the statement. I can indulge him modestly—there is usually a bit of latitude—but I was a bit concerned when he said “some examples”, particularly as he is a lawyer.

[Keir Starmer]

Mr Speaker, let me give three examples without the details: the European Aviation Safety Agency, which deals with safety; the European Medicines Agency; and Europol, which I worked with for many years. Those are the bits of the EU that we should be seeking to retain, not throw away.

It was the previous Prime Minister who got us to this place without any forethought or planning. This Prime Minister has now chosen a risky implementation plan. She owns the consequences now, in 2019 and beyond.

[Mr Davis]

When we started down this route, I said to the House that the Government had been given a national instruction that we would attempt to interpret in the national interest. That seemed to me to be the right approach. Rather than a 52/48 approach, it is an approach that encompasses everybody’s interests. I hope that we have done that today.

The hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) is a very talented man, and his questions were as forensic as we would expect. He asked about membership of the single market, so we answered that. We laid out the claims on the customs union, which was another of his questions. He asked for detail to scrutinise the plan to see where we are going. Within the context of not undermining our negotiation, that is entirely what we have tried to do. I had hoped to see some Opposition Members support what we think is a responsible, thoughtful but realistic plan that takes on board the instruction that we have been given by the British people to take us out of the European Union, but in a way that preserves our interests as best we can, whether security interests, economic interests or whatever.

Let me deal with some of the specific points raised by the hon. and learned Gentleman. I will put aside my disappointment at the tone. He says that a free trade agreement will need to have a disputes resolution procedure. So it will; they nearly all do. It does not have to be the European Court of Justice, though. We can agree that he has just got the thrust of it wrong. As for the other things: tariff-free, I agree; impediment-free, I agree. Alignment of regulation? That may well be necessary in some aspects, but we will see as the negotiation develops. On goods and services, I agree. The hon. and learned Gentleman is not putting up any hurdle that, frankly, we do not intend to cross ourselves.

Now, on this question of threats, this was not a threat. It was the Chancellor saying in an interview, “Well, if you go down the route of a punitive approach, this is the consequence and this is what will happen.” Nations defend themselves. Nobody says it is what we want to do. It is specifically not what we want to do. We want the freest, most friendly possible relationship we can get, and that is what we will set out to do.

The other areas, including questions on matters such as criminal justice, home affairs issues and so on, will develop as we go through the negotiation. The Prime Minister is a very distinguished ex-Home Secretary—the longest-lasting Home Secretary in modern times—and she has as good a grip of our home affairs needs as the ex-Director of Public Prosecutions has. He can take it as read that we will, over time in this House and, most particularly, in the negotiating chamber with the Europeans, address all the issues he raised. I happen to think that they will have as much interest in resolving those issues as we do. The negotiation is predicated on us doing what is in the interests of everybody: ourselves, the Europeans and all our neighbours in our part of the globe. That is what we intend to do and what we intend to deliver on.