Britain's Place in the World

Debate between Keir Starmer and Bim Afolami

Tuesday 15th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

I take the point about deadlines, but the serious question underpinning it is, what will be the position if it gets up to that deadline and, for whatever reason, the negotiations are continuing but the deal is not ready? Is it really the Government’s position that, because deadlines are so important, we will walk away from that progress and crash the country out without a deal? That is obviously uncomfortable for the Government, because Ministers do not want to intervene and tell me about their position.

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman see the absurdity of his position? He said he would do anything to avoid a no deal, yet every single time he has had a chance to vote for an agreement he has refused to do so. Does he recognise the absurdity of his position in that regard?

[Keir Starmer]

I said from the very start that we should have a meaningful vote on the deal so we can judge whether it is good enough. We had to fight for that, because the previous Prime Minister was not inclined to give us a vote. We would have had a statement from the Dispatch Box saying, “This is the deal.” We had to fight for a vote and the right to judge the deal.

[Bim Afolami]

You should have voted for it.

[Keir Starmer]

That means we should have voted for any deal. We might as well not have had the vote. We set out the sort of deal we would support, but the previous Prime Minister did not reach out to seek consensus across the House. [Interruption.] No, she did not. She did it after 29 March, and everybody knows it. I was in those talks, and both sides said they were held in good faith, but everybody recognised that those talks should have happened two years before they did. If they had, there might just have been a deal that could have been supported by this House. It was the policy of the last Prime Minister not to vote for it.

Let me complete my answer, which is important as it goes to the nonsense that the Act we passed to secure an extension in certain circumstances somehow undermines the negotiations. No measure was taken by this House to prevent a no deal until after 29 March. The negotiations therefore continued for two years without any safeguard against a no deal, and those negotiations did not produce a deal that could go through the House. It is nonsense to suggest that the Act undermines the talks.