Leaving the EU: Parliamentary Scrutiny

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

May I ask my right hon. Friend about the section of the report dealing with the financial settlement, from paragraph 58 onwards? The House and the country have been given the impression that we are going to make a very large payment of up to €40 billion to the European Union on condition that we secure a favourable agreement about our future trading relationship. How likely is it that next March we will find ourselves obligated under the terms of the withdrawal agreement, which will be legally binding, to make the payment, yet at that point have no legal certainty at all about our future trading relationship?

[Hilary Benn]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his question and for his sterling service on the Committee. That is indeed a possibility due to the way that the draft withdrawal agreement is constructed at the moment. The commitment to pay the outstanding moneys that we owe, which the Government have accepted, is part of that agreement and not conditional on what may transpire in the negotiations on the future partnership. There has been some debate on this subject; indeed, we questioned Ministers on it when they appeared before the Committee. We say in the report:

“We note that the Government has not yet secured a clause in the Withdrawal Agreement linking the financial settlement to the satisfactory conclusion of negotiations on the framework for the future relationship. We call on the Government to confirm whether the inclusion of such a clause is one of its negotiating objectives.”

We wait to see what the Government say in response. As things stand at the moment, the commitment has been made to pay the money as part of the withdrawal agreement, and it is not linked to the future partnership and the treaty negotiations on that, which we hope will be concluded by December 2020.