(4 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberI identify one in my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake).
On workers’ rights, the EU requires employers to offer 14 weeks of maternity pay. In the UK, we offer 39 weeks of maternity pay. If we wanted to reduce workers’ rights, why would this Government not have done that already?
My hon. Friend makes exactly the right point: this Government wish to have the highest possible standards for workers across the country because we believe that that is the right way forward for the British economy. I am glad he made that point.
I wish to address the 48%, whose concerns must always be in our minds. The revised political declaration sets out a vision of the closest possible co-operation between the UK and our European friends—a
“relationship…rooted in the values and interests that the”
European
“Union and the United Kingdom share…anchored in their common European heritage.”
To British citizens living in EU countries and to EU citizens who have made their homes here and who have contributed so much, I say that this Bill protects their rights, ensuring that they can carry on living their lives as before.
(4 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberObviously, I would like Parliament to have a say on the deal that we do, but I think the best way to get the people to have a say is to have a general election, and I hope that the hon. Lady will support that.
One of the precedents quoted by the Supreme Court yesterday was a 1965 ruling that a Government cannot deprive individuals or companies of their assets without fair compensation. What implications does my right hon. Friend think that might have for a future Labour party manifesto?
I am delighted that my hon. Friend has mentioned that, with his characteristic acuity and his support of property and the rights of people across this country. Those would be despoiled if the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) ever got anywhere near power. He has a Maduro-esque plan to take away private property from great, great schools across the country of the kind he attended himself once, in an ecstasy of hypocrisy, and thereby to incur the taxpayer with £7 billion of pointless extra cost to pay for the education of the children concerned.
(5 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberMy right hon. Friend talks about avoiding a hard border in Northern Ireland. Speaking to the DUP conference at the weekend before last, he said that if Great Britain chose to vary regulations, there would be a need for regulatory checks and a customs border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Does he accept then that in some future world where the UK can vary its regulations as a whole, that would inevitably lead to regulatory checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of Ireland?
I am glad my hon. Friend has raised that point, because it is very important. Michel Barnier himself has said that technical solutions to implement such regulatory checks—not necessarily customs checks but regulatory checks—away from the frontier can be found, and that is what we should be doing. Frankly, that is what we should have been doing for the last two years; that is where our effort and our energy should have gone. And on that point about regulation, it will not be good enough to tell the people of Northern Ireland they are now going to be treated differently and it will not be good enough to tell the businesspeople of the UK that now and in the future they will be burdened with regulation emanating from Brussels over which we will have absolutely no control, and we could not stop it because we could not see an alternative. I must say to colleagues that if they think it is too disruptive to go now for the super-Canada option—to go now for freedom—just wait until we feel the popular reaction that will follow when people realise the referendum has been betrayed.
(6 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRussia’s use of an illegal nerve agent in Salisbury was met with an unprecedented global diplomatic rebuff, in the sense that 28 countries expelled a total of 153 diplomats. The House will understand, therefore, the balance between the UK and Russia in expulsions of operatives: we lost a handful of people involved in the security side, while they lost about 153 across the world—a massive net loss for Russia and a significant gain for the UK. But we remain committed to a policy of engaging with Russia, while being wary of what it does.
Despite the fact that oil and gas exports make up 70% of Russia’s international trade, they are not currently covered under the EU sanctions regime due to the high reliance of the EU on Russian gas exports. After our exit from the European Union, would that be a sensible extra measure for us to take that might assist with our diplomatic efforts?
We will, of course, consider all possibilities once we exit the European Union and take back control of our sanctions policy.