Oral Answers to Questions

Keir Starmer Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

My hon. Friend makes exactly the right point: we are able to make trade deals once we leave the European Union, and that will give us enormous benefits, because as the European Commission itself admits, 90% of world trade will be outside the EU, not within it, in the coming decades.

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

The Secretary of State set out his position on the EEA. On 15 August, he told the “Today” programme that transitional arrangements should be

“as close as possible to the current arrangements”.

Two days before that, the Chancellor and the International Trade Secretary said in a joint article that Britain would leave the customs union and leave the single market. Both positions cannot be right. Will the Secretary of State step up to the Dispatch Box and tell us what form of transitional arrangements the Government are seeking to negotiate?

[Mr Davis]

I did that only a couple of days ago. I will come back to the point, but for the House’s interest, I will read a small part of a LabourList article—I read LabourList all the time, of course—by the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), who opened this question. He said:

“On Sunday Keir Starmer used an article in The Observer to call time on the ambiguity that had come to define Labour’s approach to Brexit since the referendum”—

the ambiguity, right? He said, “It was an approach”—this is the best bit—

“that…served us well on 8 June”.

What was that ambiguity? Tell leavers you want to leave; tell remainers you want to remain. That ambiguity, of course, could not last, and, as the hon. Gentleman said, it was never sustainable. That is the ambiguity of the right hon. and learned Gentleman who has just asked his question.

Now, our position is very clear. The transition arrangements will meet three different requirements: to provide time for the British Government, if need be, to create new regulatory agencies and so on; time for companies to make their arrangements to deal with new regulation; and time for other countries to make arrangements on, for example, new customs proposals. That is what will be required. That is why we need to be as close as we are to our current arrangements. It does not mean that, in the long run, we are in either the customs union or the single market.

[Mr Speaker]

There is plenty of material for colleagues to include in their Second Reading debate speeches if they so wish. The material might be better located there.

[Keir Starmer]

I asked the Secretary of State his position and he started with my position. If he wants to swap places—any time.

Given the progress to date, and knowing that we will go back to this answer, what prospects does the Secretary of State genuinely believe there are for bespoke transitional agreements being agreed, negotiated and implemented by March 2019? Knowing how anxiously businesses are looking at this, when does he anticipate being able to tell them what the arrangements will be, because they need to make arrangements?

[Mr Davis]

That is a very legitimate and sensible question. I believe that the benefits of a transitional arrangement go both ways—they are symmetrical. They apply equally to France, Holland, Germany or Denmark as they do to us. That is some of the read-back we have been getting. I know that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has been travelling around Europe himself and he will no doubt have picked up that same read-back. We are finding that the Commission is open to discussion of transition. We have raised it only briefly at each of the last two meetings because it does not fit within the current four groups of negotiation, but I think there is a very good prospect.