EU Exit Negotiations

Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

Had the hon. Gentleman been paying attention, he would have heard me set that out clearly in my statement.

The shadow Secretary of State talked about investment into this country, so I was surprised that he did not welcome Rolls-Royce’s recent decision to increase its investment in the UK or Unilever’s decision to maintain its dual UK-Dutch structure.

The shadow Secretary of State referred to my letter asking him some of the most basic questions on Labour’s policy on the substance. He has almost become the prince of process: he argues about protocol and procedure but cannot answer a single question on the substance. In reality, we got some answers at the Labour party conference. We had the shadow Secretary of State saying that Labour would whip a vote against any deal outside the customs union that the United Kingdom strikes with the 27 EU member states. Let us be clear: if all 28 Governments agree on a deal that works for the UK and for the EU, the Labour Front-Bench team, at least, would vote against it—they would try to veto it.

Worse still, the leader of the Labour party, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn)—I am glad that he is present to answer for this—has opened the door to a second referendum. That is a thinly veiled ruse to reverse Brexit altogether. It is now clear to every voter that the Labour leadership team have trashed their promise at the general election to deliver on Brexit; they have allowed political opportunism to consume what is in the national interests; and they have demonstrated, yet again, that they are just not fit to govern.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

Our opening offer from the Chequers meeting is that we will join part of the single market, so long as we do not comply with all its rules as they are at the moment, and that we will join the customs union, so long as we are allowed to have an exception that allows us to put holes through the tariff wall with our own third-party agreements with other countries. The other EU leaders have been signalling for months that that is unacceptable, and so far it has not got us very far.

As our chief negotiator, will the Secretary of State assure me that he now expects that, as with all international organisations, the EU will indeed move a little nearer to our position, just as we move a little nearer to its position as a matter of compromise? Will he reject as quite ridiculous the arguments from some quarters that we can resolve this serious international dispute by tearing up Chequers and moving even further away from the EU’s minimum requirements for anybody to have an open trading relationship with the continent?