Parliamentary Scrutiny of Leaving the EU

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

The hon. and learned Gentleman can wait until the later part of my speech, when I will give him the exact answer. He will have to wait for that.

The reason this has not been promised before the end of March is that it takes time, as the hon. and learned Gentleman will understand. We are meeting organisations from across the country, from the creative industries, telecoms, financial services, agriculture and energy, including the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, Universities UK and the TUC. All those organisations are putting their concerns to us. Some of those are incredibly serious concerns, which we have to deal with. We are focusing on dealing with those concerns, establishing what opportunities there are—there are significant opportunities, too—and then devising a negotiating strategy that serves the interests of the whole country: all of them, not one at a time.

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

My constituency has the third highest level of financial sector employment in the UK. Does the right hon. Gentleman share my concern that while employees in that sector do not hear the detail of the Government’s position on negotiations, they do hear—as we have just heard from his party’s Back Benchers—from employers who are looking, over time, to move out of this country?

[Mr Davis]

I am afraid that in the immediate aftermath of the vote to leave there was an extraordinary outpouring almost of grief—a “blame Brexit” festival, if you like. It ranged from the Italian Finance Minister blaming us for the state of his bond markets to, more significantly, banks in this country saying that they were laying people off because of Brexit, which, of course, turned out to be entirely untrue. I would have sympathy with employees made nervous by employers who are guessing the worst outcome.