New Partnership with the EU

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

In 45 minutes, the Prime Minister has not delivered a plan—she has delivered a Pandora’s box. Let us talk of just one example raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn). The Prime Minister said that she wants us to leave the common commercial policy and the common external tariff but to have associate membership of the customs union—a type of membership that does not yet exist and that nobody else has. Can the Secretary of State tell us exactly what this means for deals like the Nissan deal on which thousands of jobs depend, or any others that are in train—or simply, what cake it is that he wants to have and eat this time?

[Mr Davis]

First, Nissan has decided to enlarge its investment in Britain, so it is clearly persuaded of this circumstance. Secondly, we have said from the beginning that the relationship—the new partnership—that we want to have with the European Union will be unique; it will be brand new. It is unique in many ways. Let me give the hon. Lady one example. In the trade deal that we are seeking to arrive at, we will have the same standards of production applying to all of Britain that apply to the European Union now. There is no other trade deal in the world like that. The same thing applies to the customs agreement. We are in a position where currently we have no customs barriers, so why should we not have a completely frictionless one when we get to the end of the deal?