Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I have responded to the points that the hon. Lady has raised. I have been very clear, and I have said in the House, for example, that the action taken against child migrants was not unacceptable and is not something we would do here in the UK. We did not consider that acceptable. She wants me to challenge the President of the United States. What better way to challenge the President of the United States than to sit down and talk to him?

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

Q6. I look forward to welcoming Heather Steven, the practice manager at Loftus’s GP surgery, to my right hon. Friend’s Downing Street reception for the NHS later. Can my right hon. Friend assure the House that as part of this Government’s record investment in the NHS, she will ensure that primary care services receive all the support they need?

[The Prime Minister]

The intention behind this increase in the NHS budget is that we will see it directed to frontline and primary services. We need a long-term plan. The NHS is developing that long-term plan itself. The budget will have increased by 2023-24, with an extra £20 billion a year in real terms compared with today, and it is through the 10-year plan, which will be led by doctors, that we will make sure we are delivering world-class care for everyone and that every penny is well spent.

June European Council

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I have said on many occasions that we will be leaving the customs union, but we will of course be putting in place customs arrangements with the European Union that will match the ambition of our trade relationship in the future.

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

My constituents were very clear on what they were voting for in 2016, and that would not be delivered by a Norway-style agreement. Can the Prime Minister guarantee that, whatever our future arrangement with the EU is, it will not circumscribe our ability to strike free trade deals or to end free movement?

[The Prime Minister]

As my hon. Friend makes absolutely clear, the future relationship must enable us to strike those trade deals and have an independent trade policy, and also to bring an end to free movement.

G7

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Monday 11th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman has set out several ideas there. I can assure him that we are considering ways to increase the ability to deal with this issue of plastics, including working with industry to ensure that the plastics it produces are all recyclable. That is what we want. Working with industry and creating opportunities for new developments are also an important part of this.

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

President Trump’s decision to impose steel and aluminium tariffs is obviously deeply concerning for my constituents and British Steel at Skinningrove. We all deplore them, but as my right hon. Friend has said, we need to work constructively to get them overturned. With that in mind, can she give further details to the House about the precise nature of her discussions with the President on getting them lifted?

[The Prime Minister]

Obviously, the UK has been affected by tariffs imposed on the European Union, and we discussed how further dialogue could take place between the EU and the United States to avoid an escalatory tit for tat on tariffs. It is through that dialogue that it will be possible to address the issue of tariffs on steel and aluminium.

Leaving the EU: Customs

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

Today’s motion shows definitively that the Opposition are unfit to be a party of Government. It is quite simply the height of irresponsibility for the Labour party to demand that the Government should publish confidential Cabinet papers about our future customs arrangements at a time of such crucial negotiations. That would inevitably expose every detail to our negotiating partners in Europe and destroy every inch of leverage that we have with them. No Government could assent to that, and no Opposition worthy of being a Government should ask for it.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I do not know whether my hon. Friend heard the historical analogy from the hon. Member for Streatham (Chuka Umunna), but it was entirely false, because the Labour party then was not trying to get Cabinet papers revealed—that would have been ridiculous, either in wartime or now. What it was trying to do was bring down the Prime Minister. That suggests that this motion and this debate are not about the truth; they are about trying to bring down the Prime Minister.

[Mr Clarke]

I agree, and I would draw another historical analogy: it is 60 years ago this year that Nye Bevan issued his famous warning to the Labour party not to send a British Foreign Secretary into the negotiating chamber naked, and that is precisely what this motion would do. It runs directly contrary to our national interest, and the whole country will see how profoundly misguided it is. There is no way of overstating this: every Member who votes for this motion—every one—will be damaging the principles of Cabinet government in the hope of inflicting partisan advantage. It is unforgivable. Coming a week after north-east Labour MPs called for a second referendum—or, as they now euphemistically call it, a people’s vote, as if a referendum were not exactly that—this shows the Opposition in the worst possible light.

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

Given that documents the Government have produced show a devastating impact of at least 11% on the north-east economy, why does the hon. Gentleman continue to lash himself to the mast of this devastating Tory Brexit, which will harm his constituents and mine?

[Mr Clarke]

This is the same “Project Fear” prognosis that we heard in 2016, which has been comprehensively rubbished and which nearly 70% of the hon. Lady’s own constituents rejected—and she continues to lecture me about listening to my constituents and acting in their interests.

The Labour party is unreconciled to Brexit, unwilling to deliver it and unfit to run our country, but the Leader of the Opposition should be thanked for giving us another opportunity to point out the many reasons why Labour’s policy on the customs union and Brexit is so absurd. First, depending on who we ask and on which day, Labour has committed to staying in “a” or “the” customs union, but at the same time says it wants the UK to have a say over future trade deals and arrangements. The whole point is that if we are in the customs union but out of the EU, the UK will have no formal role or veto in trade negotiations, and the EU will have no incentive, let alone legal obligation, to negotiate deals that are in the UK’s interests.

Secondly, Labour’s U-turn towards stay in “a” or “the” customs union clearly breaks a manifesto commitment on which its Members all stood. That manifesto said:

“Labour will set out our priorities in an International Trade White Paper…on the future of Britain’s trade policy”.

We now discover that that White Paper would simply read: “Priority No. 1: give trade policy back to Brussels”.

Thirdly, the EU’s customs tariffs hit the poorest in this country the hardest. The highest EU tariffs are concentrated on food, clothing and footwear, which account for 37% of total tariff revenue, so the poorest British consumers are paying to prop up European industries.

Fourthly, the customs union not only hurts the poorest in our own country; it also supresses the economic growth of the developing world, because EU trade policy encourages cheap imports of raw materials from developing countries, such as coffee, but heavily taxes imports of processed versions of the same good. This means that poorer countries are stuck in a relationship of dependency, whereby there is no incentive to invest in processing technologies, which could lift them from their status as agrarian economies.

Finally, the House should be reminded that during negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, about which Opposition Members made so much fuss in 2015 and 2016, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) gave an impassioned speech to the House in which he concluded that, in negotiating TTIP, we were

“engaging in a race to the bottom”.—[Official Report, 15 January 2015; Vol. 590, c. 1108.]

As Leader of the Opposition, he is now proposing a policy that would completely abrogate the UK’s ability to veto such arrangements in the future, let alone influence their negotiation.

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is utterly two-faced that Labour MPs in this House are asking our Government to publish all their negotiating positions but that their friends in the European Parliament are not asking the European Commission to publish theirs?

[Mr Clarke]

I cannot improve on that point, other than to say that it goes to the heart of the matter, which is that this is not about our national interest; it is about the Labour party’s domestic political interest. It is shameful and wrong.

The Labour Party, in supporting a customs union, has gone back on the principles of a lifetime, broken a manifesto pledge and sided with corporations over consumers. It would punish the poorest in this country and abroad and subject the UK, one of the largest economies in the world, to a Turkey-style relationship of dependency in which the EU has complete control over our trade and customs. It is desperate for any opportunity to bring down the Government and has chosen to put power before principles and party before country. Millions of its own voters will be watching very closely indeed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

The hon. Gentleman’s profession should have been orator and statesmen; that would have been a better description. He is absolutely right that we should be working with the police, and that is why one of the measures in our strategy is to deter and disrupt our adversaries, which includes states, criminals and hacktivists.

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

6. What recent assessment he has made of trends in the level of intimidation faced by people in public life.

[The Minister without Portfolio (Brandon Lewis)]

The trend of increased intimidation can seriously damage our democracy. That is why we will be consulting on recommendations made by the Committee on Standards in Public Life to undertake legislative changes, for example, to remove candidates’ addresses from ballot papers and create an electoral offence of intimidating candidates. An electoral offence will reflect our view that elections and candidates need to be better protected.

[Mr Clarke]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. He will be aware of incidents designed to intimidate people from being involved in public life, including a recent incident where a brick was thrown through a Conservative candidate’s window in Liverpool. Does he agree that it is vital that all involved in public life seek to encourage a culture of respect and tackle those who seek to intimidate people?

[Brandon Lewis]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes a very good point. That was a shocking incident, which I hope all of us on both sides of the House would find abhorrent. The candidate had her one-year-old daughter in the room when the brick was thrown. That is a salutary lesson to us all. Such conduct deters people from participating in politics. That is why we have to look at removing the requirement on local addresses, but we also need leadership from the top. That is why we have introduced a respect code, which I hope the Labour party will eventually follow.

Syria

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The action was targeted very carefully on chemical weapons capabilities. It was designed to degrade those capabilities and also to deter the willingness of the regime to use those chemical weapons and to give a message to others about the resolve of the international community to return to a situation in which it is accepted that the use of chemical weapons is prohibited.

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

In contrast to the hon. Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah), I should like to say that taking action to prevent the gassing of men, women and children will always be done in my name. Does the way in which the Russians and the Syrians are now attempting to cover up their crimes in Syria not speak volumes about what has occurred and the wilful naivety of those who attempt to deny it?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I have set out, attempts are being made to ensure that it is impossible to collect evidence on the ground about what has happened. That speaks volumes about what has been done by the Syrian regime and the position taken by Russia.

National Security and Russia

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Indeed. I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I will discuss that organisation further on in my speech.

In welcoming the expressions of co-operation and solidarity from our international allies, including the withdrawal of the EU ambassador to Moscow and the co-ordinated expulsion of Russian diplomats, we must continue to build further, concrete multilateral actions to send a clear message that the Russians’ actions are not acceptable. As I said previously, it is by building alliances that we strengthen our approach and the action we take.

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Leo Docherty (Aldershot) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, although he will forgive me if I do not join in the comparisons between Russia and Nazism. They are not accurate. Nazism was a hateful ideology that sought the death of millions. It deliberately sought to persecute and murder thousands, hundreds of thousands and millions of people, including Jews, gays and Gypsies. We are not dealing with that in today’s Russia. We are not dealing with an ideology; we are dealing with a kleptocracy. We are dealing with a simple thieving regime under the leadership of one man who has enriched himself beyond the dreams of Croesus or avarice. He has made sure that even his cellist, a man none of us has ever heard of, has, according the recent Panama papers, earned more in his short life and professional career than any musician we have ever heard of. He has, apparently, over $2 billion in assets. Who can dream of such wealth? Certainly none of the musicians we could name. Perhaps I should have stuck with those lessons, Madam Deputy Speaker.

We are dealing with a very real threat, which is why I particularly welcome the fact that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is here to lead the debate herself. She has demonstrated, not only through her premiership but through her time as Home Secretary, how seriously she takes these matters and I am grateful for her leadership.

[Mr Simon Clarke]

Had I had the opportunity to ask the Leader of the Opposition a question in an intervention I would have asked him whether he supported the continuation of our nuclear deterrent. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is absolutely critical and the lynchpin of western security?

Salisbury Incident

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady has raised a very important point about our emergency services. We have already, in recent years, had a further look at the framework within which they operate and the sort of incidents to which they might need to respond, but we will of course continue to keep this under review.

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

The attacks on Mr Litvinenko and Colonel Skripal had one thing in common: they were designed not just to kill, but to kill in a particularly terrifying and horrible way. With that dreadful threat in mind, will the Prime Minister ensure that our national defence is in sufficient shape to meet that Russian threat in terms of composition, location and funding?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes. As I have said in response to a number of questions, this is a matter of the capabilities that we have across our national security and defence. It is important that we have been conducting, and are continuing to conduct, a number of reviews that go straight to the heart of this matter, to ensure that we have the capabilities that we need across the board.

Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland: Border Arrangements

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

As I said to the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), in any Government, Ministers write letters and memorandums and have conversations from time to time. The policy of the Government under our system is the policy that is agreed collectively by the Cabinet, and the policy of the Cabinet and the Government is what I have set out today.

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

May I associate myself with what the Minister has said and with what the Prime Minister said at Prime Minister’s questions about the inconceivable nature of the EU’s proposals to date? Does he agree that the evidence given by the permanent secretary of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to the Public Accounts Committee that a two-tier system, including a trusted trader scheme and derogations for small business, could help to avoid the physical infrastructure that we all want to avoid at the border?

[Mr Lidington]

Those items were also mentioned in the Government’s position paper that was published last summer about the Irish border. I am not saying that those will necessarily provide a comprehensive solution, but that is evidence of our good will in seeking pragmatic, constructive ways forward.

Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We continue to stand behind all the commitments that we made in December, and my negotiating team will work with the Commission to agree how they should be translated into legal form in the withdrawal agreement. The hon. Gentleman is right: the draft legal text that the Commission has published would, if implemented, undermine the UK common market and threaten the constitutional integrity of the UK by creating a customs and regulatory border down the Irish sea, and no UK Prime Minister could ever agree to it. I will be making it crystal clear to President Juncker and others that we will never do so. We are committed to ensuring that we see no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, but the December text also made it clear that there should continue to be trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, as there is today.

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

Q13. Unemployment has fallen faster in the north-east than anywhere else in our country, which is tremendous news. The next step to put rocket boosters under the economy on Teesside would be to create a free port at Teesport. Will my right hon. Friend look seriously at this idea, which has great support from the Tees Valley Mayor, Ben Houchen, and from local business leaders?

[The Prime Minister]

When I visited Ben Houchen and Teesport, this was one of the proposals that they did put to me. I am very happy to join my hon. Friend in welcoming the fall in unemployment that we have seen in the north-east, and there are a number of ways in which we are providing that economic growth and ensuring that we see it continuing in the north-east. That is why we are investing £126 million through the Tees Valley local growth deal. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor has confirmed recently that we do remain open to ideas that could drive growth and provide benefits to the UK and its people, so we will keep all these options under consideration.