Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Baker Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his new position. There is absolutely no one whom I would rather see in his job at this time, and I wish him every possible success.

Papers that are available to my hon. Friend will show that as long ago as October, I was seeking to create a parliamentary moment to galvanise the whole Government to prepare not only for the unwanted contingency of no deal, but for all scenarios, including the end of the implementation period. Will he now use the collective agreement reached at Chequers to go out and galvanise the whole Government to deliver, in the knowledge that that is not something that the Department for Exiting the European Union can direct, and that it will require those at the very top of the Government to mobilise every Department?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question, and for leaving me an unbelievable quantity of reading to do because of the diligent way in which, as he rightly says, he prepared for every scenario.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

Colleagues are a rum lot, I must say! I was just about to call the hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) but he has beetled out of the Chamber, poor chap. Admittedly, he was not to know that I was going to call him, but had he stayed, I would have done, and I usually do. It is very odd. As for the hon. Member for Clacton (Giles Watling), we always savour his contributions but he has already spoken at topical questions so cannot do so again.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Given that HMRC makes available online the documentation for its computable general equilibrium model, will the Department follow suit so that the public can be objectively informed about the shortcomings of such models and so that the model can be fully scrutinised by interested external economists?

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend for the first in what I am sure will be a series of valuable and important forensic contributions. I shall take a good, long, hard look at the matter.