EU Exit Negotiations

Peter Grant Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

The microphone is there, and the speaker is there.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) has touched on some important points. No. 1, on the ability to do this deal, we start from a position of exact identity on product regulations and other social regulation—such regulation is what worries the European Union—so we are in the same place. The issue is not one of bringing together massively different economies but of maintaining a reasonable relationship between the regulatory structures of our country and of that organisation.

My right hon. and learned Friend is quite right in one respect, which is that whenever a trade agreement is forged, it will have within it agreements on standards—the Canadian one did, for example—and not just on product standards but on, say, labour law standards. The Canadian deal has labour law commitments to stay above International Labour Organisation standards. In that respect, we are in the same place.

In terms of the implementation or transitionary period—call it what you will—there is now widespread agreement across Europe that it will be beneficial to have an implementation period. How long it will be and how it will work will be decided straightforwardly on practicalities. Three things will drive an implementation period: No. 1 is this Government’s ability to put in place regulations, new customs arrangements, and so on; No. 2 is the ability of companies, corporations and sometimes people to accommodate it, which is principally the issue with financial services, for example; and No. 3 is the ability of other countries to accommodate it. That is why the quote from Xavier Bertrand is important, because it shows a clear intent on the part of major French politicians to bring about the sort of frictionless trade that we want. I find myself largely agreeing with my right hon. and learned Friend, but this is why it is entirely possible to deliver a first-class Brexit for Britain.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his statement, and for giving us an advance copy.

The Secretary of State is looking for imagination and flexibility from the European Union, but I do not think there is anyone in the European Union with the fevered imagination needed to think that the NHS would be £357 million a week better off if we left the European Union. Will he clarify exactly what flexibility the UK Government have shown? They were inflexible to the point of obstinacy in trying to avoid any parliamentary oversight on the article 50 process. They set their own inflexible deadline for triggering article 50, and they set their own inflexible red lines before the negotiations had even started, including an inflexible determination to leave the single market without any idea at all as to where we would go instead.

All this has been done over the heads of the devolved national Governments and, to a large extent, over the heads of Members of this Parliament. I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State has updated the House today, but he has not updated the Joint Ministerial Committee since six weeks before article 50 was triggered, despite a joint request from both the Welsh and Scottish Governments for such a meeting.

Can the Secretary of State confirm whether the Government will now be flexible in having proper, meaningful and constructive dialogue with the devolved nations? Will he now accept that this Government’s continued obsession with immigration is forcing him into a dangerously inflexible position on the single market, threatening 80,000 jobs in Scotland and hundreds of thousands of jobs throughout the UK? Or will the Government continue on their present course, charging blindfold towards a cliff edge and relying on the Daily Mail to make us believe that it was all the foreigners’ fault when it all goes wrong?

[Mr Davis]

First, on flexibility, I have just mentioned areas that matter to individuals, such as guaranteeing their pensions, guaranteeing their healthcare and so on, and those areas did involve some flexibility on the part of the British negotiating team, which did a very good job.

On notification, I chaired a number of JMC meetings—I do not do it anymore, as the JMC is now chaired by the First Secretary of State—to keep the devolved Administrations up to speed. Indeed, yesterday I briefed in detail Mike Russell of the Scottish Government and Mark Drakeford of the Welsh Administration. Obviously, at the moment I have a bit of difficulty briefing the Northern Ireland Executive, because they do not exist yet. But the hon. Gentleman can take it as read that the concerns of the devolved Administrations have been taken on board very squarely and will continue to be so in the course of the ongoing negotiation.