New Partnership with the EU

Matt Warman Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

My hon. Friend is right that a level of unskilled migration is likely to continue. Where from and how it is to be controlled will be matters for the new immigration policy, which will be under the control of this House—a point to which I keep returning. My job is to return the policy here; it will then be the job of this House to make the right decision in the British national interest, and I am sure that it will.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

My constituency voted, as Members know, more strongly than anywhere else in the country to leave the European Union, and I know that many people in Boston and Skegness will welcome the clarity and tone of today’s announcement. Does the Secretary of State agree that when the people of Boston and Skegness voted for this country to be able to control its immigration policy and do our own trade deals, they were voting knowingly to leave the customs union and the single market?

[Mr Davis]

I do not want to get into trying to interpret everybody’s inner thinking, but the simple truth is that advocates on both sides of the argument made it plain during the campaign that they thought leaving the European Union meant leaving the single market. I cannot think that the decision was made in ignorance.