No-deal Brexit: Short Positions against the Pound Debate

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Department: HM Treasury

No-deal Brexit: Short Positions against the Pound

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts
Monday 30th September 2019

(5 years, 2 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Simon Clarke Portrait Mr Clarke
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The Prime Minister has the moral courage to deliver on the referendum result, take our country forward, deliver what millions of people voted for and make our country a better place to live. If we are going to exchange quotes, let me quote a bit more from the article:

“In short, there is no evidence that the hedge funds that have backed Johnson’s election campaign have ‘millions of pounds’ of speculative bets on no-deal Brexit. They have millions of pounds of speculative bets on UK companies, yes, but that is simply business as usual.”

Kerry McCarthy Portrait Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
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The reason why this is not business as usual is that we are faced with Government Ministers who have close connections with and financial interest in some of the speculative funds and who are making a decision that would have catastrophic consequences for my constituents and for businesses in my constituency, and there is no transparency as to the closeness of that relationship. It cannot be divorced from what is going on in this place, which is why the Minister needs to agree to the requests for an inquiry. We need to get to the bottom of this.

Simon Clarke Portrait Mr Clarke
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The Government are doing what they are doing because we believe it is right to leave the European Union on 31 October, as we all promised that we would. That is absolutely what animates our actions; any suggestion to the contrary is not just wrong but offensive.