Exiting the European Union

Martin Whitfield Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

To judge by the size of that document, it is probably a combined statutory instrument which brings together identical changes in regulatory arrangements that have to be reflected in changes to different secondary legislative instruments. The Committees that deal with statutory instruments in this House and the House of Lords have expressly called on the Government to use combined SIs in that manner.

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister has said tonight that the UK can unilaterally withdraw from the backstop. Which court will the European Union and the arbitration panel go to if they choose not to accept our unilateral departure?

[Mr Lidington]

The normal international legal procedures would have to be followed were either party wanting to challenge whether the other had failed to carry out its obligations. What the Prime Minister was describing in her comments this evening is how the United Kingdom would give effect unilaterally, if it came to it, to a situation in which the backstop had in practice become permanent, which is not supposed to happen either under article 50 or in the terms of the solemn legal commitments that the EU is entering into.