Oral Answers to Questions

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Thursday 3rd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We have so many strengths in our country, which make us well placed for our future outside the EU and its customs union. Some 90% of future global growth will come from outside the EU. We had record high foreign direct investment last year and exports up by 10%, with unemployment down, inflation down and growth up—all of this is despite Brexit.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree with this from the Institute for Fiscal Studies:

“Get a sense of scale, throw in some simple arithmetic and sprinkle a basic understanding of trade and it is obvious that the economic costs of leaving the customs union must outweigh the benefits”?

[Suella Braverman]

No.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Davis]

The clarity of the position of not being a member of the customs union is absolute, and has been since the beginning, unlike the right hon. Gentleman’s party, which has had a number of different positions on this matter. Frankly, it is incredibly important that we get this right—not just for trade, which is massively important, but for the extremely sensitive issue of maintaining the peace process in Northern Ireland—and I do not undertake to put an artificial deadline on something so important.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

People from the EU27 working in my constituency and Bristol West constituents living and working in the EU27 tell me that they are worried about their pensions post-Brexit. What are the Government doing to protect my constituents’ pensions?

[Mr Robin Walker]

The citizens’ rights element of the withdrawal agreement that we have reached in its entirety with the EU covers the continuity of pension provisions and the accumulation of contributions between member states. This is an issue on which we have reached agreement, and we look forward to being able to provide full certainty to all those constituents.

Oral Answers to Questions

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Baker]

I certainly agree that we should have our own trade policies in place and that we should not be standing against free trade. We should be unequivocally embracing free trade, but we must stand against unfair, anti-competitive practices, and that is what we will do.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

If the Secretary of State and the Government will not consider the customs union, what specific support will they give to the aerospace sector, which employs so many people in Bristol?

[Mr Baker]

I have good news for the hon. Lady. Both sides have agreed in principle that we should have a free trade agreement covering all sectors with zero tariffs. We believe that with a good-quality customs agreement we can achieve near-frictionless trade, and I believe that, taken together, those arrangements will ensure that our manufacturing industries, including aerospace, will have an ever brighter future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

As to the right hon. Gentleman’s opening remark, as he is an intelligent and well-informed person it is amazing that he does not differentiate between a £100 billion demand and a £35 billion outcome; that seems to have been a somewhat useful exercise by the Government.

As for the next stage, there is a negotiation to be undertaken. There is a variety of important areas, but the primary area for me is the question of our right to sign trade deals during the implementation period so we can bring them into force immediately after we leave. That is a massive advantage for the United Kingdom to have.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

Businesses in my constituency tell me that continued membership of the single market and customs union during the transition period will help them safeguard jobs, yet the Prime Minister on 18 December ruled this out. What have the Prime Minister and Secretary of State got against the employment of people in Bristol West?

[Mr Davis]

With the greatest respect to the hon. Lady, the purpose of the implementation period, which was asked for by just about every business organisation, is to ensure they face stability in the couple of years in the run-up to the conclusion of the future relationship. That is what is going to happen, and that is why companies and the CBI and others welcomed it when we announced it.

Government’s EU Exit Analysis

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

The simple answer is no. We would make this information available to the whole House on the same basis, while responding to the points on confidentiality that are covered in the Opposition motion.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Walker]

If the hon. Lady will give me one moment, I will give way. I just want to complete my point about the caveats to the analysis.

At this very early stage, the analysis only considers the off-the-shelf arrangements that currently exist, and we have been clear these are not what we are seeking in the negotiations. It does not consider our desired outcome, which is the most ambitious relationship possible with the European Union, as set out by the Prime Minister in her Florence speech—such an agreement is in the interests of both the UK and the EU—and, to be crystal clear, it does not consider a comprehensive free trade agreement scenario as some reports have suggested, but simply an average FTA. We believe that we can do much better, given our unique starting point and shared history. Therefore, the scenarios in this analysis continue to suffer from the flaws that we have seen in previous analyses of this type.

--- Later in debate ---

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I am so grateful to the Minister for being very patient and giving way to me, but I must press him on this point. It is curious to think that the Government are at this moment planning their negotiating strategy without having considered adequate impact assessments. I went to the so-called reading room in December. It was laughable that I had to sign a piece of paper, a copy of which I was not allowed to remove, in order to promise that I would not reveal what was in the documents. If there is going to be another reading room, I will do exactly what I did last time and reveal what is not in them, which is quite a lot. When will the Government work out that they need these impact assessments to have a decent negotiating strategy?

[Mr Walker]

As we have said many times, the Government are informed by a wide range of analyses, but I am responding to the motion from the hon. Lady’s Front Benchers that respects the importance of confidentiality in this case.

Oral Answers to Questions

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise the case of one of her constituents who has made a significant contribution. I think that we all recognise that from our own constituencies. I trust that she joins me in welcoming the cost-free exchange of EU permanent residence documents for the new settled status documents as one part of the agreement that we have reached. None the less, she is right that we must continue to take this issue seriously.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

Unfortunately, the 3 million EU 27 citizens living in this country and the UK citizens living in the EU 27 do not feel that certainty because of the words

“nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.”

Will the Government not now commit to putting an amendment down to any of the forthcoming EU Bills to give that certainty?

[Mr Walker]

The hon. Lady will recognise that certainty in a reciprocal deal has to be delivered through the withdrawal agreement, but we have been very clear from the start of this process that we want to protect the rights of citizens and to make sure that they can continue to live their lives as before, and that is a commitment on which we have delivered through the joint resolution last week.

Oral Answers to Questions

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robin Walker]

I have answered questions on that issue in previous question sessions and I have been very clear that it is our intention to seek agreement with the European Union on mutual recognition of protected names of origin, and we will continue to work on its delivery with colleagues at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as we enter the future partnership negotiations.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

This week, the Committee of the Nuclear Safeguards Bill was told by many expert witnesses that the Bill was inadequate and the time insufficient to create an alternative structure for Euratom when we leave the EU. Given the risks, will the Secretary of State commit now to pushing for maintaining our membership of Euratom in the agreement?

[Mr Baker]

The institutions of Euratom are tightly coupled with the institutions of the European Union. Therefore, we need to leave Euratom as we leave the EU.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

That is not the advice.

[Mr Baker]

That is the advice that we have had. We will look carefully at the advice of those experts and take what steps are appropriate to the Government.

UK Nationals in the EU: Rights

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Sadly, I suspect that we could spend much of the afternoon considering yet further such problems.

All these difficulties confirm what many of us have argued from the outset—that a negotiation would be difficult and a unilateral guarantee was needed, even just to get the discussion going. It is not about exchanging these rights for those rights, but about having a genuine conversation, trying to do the right thing, and moving into a position where we have a genuine discussion rather than get locked in to a winners-losers negotiation, which seems to me all too likely to remain deadlocked for a very long time, not least because there are many players involved.

I suspect that it is not always clear to everyone in Britain that it is not just the Commission negotiators who must be satisfied; the European Parliament has a key role as well, and it is not very impressed either. Guy Verhofstadt, the Parliament’s chief negotiator, has been fairly definitive. In his statement, he said:

“The European Parliament cannot be clear enough that sufficient progress means progress across the board, and not just in one or two areas.”

He clarified:

“To be precise, the European Parliament will remain vigilant regarding citizens’ rights and will continue to push for full rights for EU citizens in the UK as well as UK citizens in the EU. It is a core mission of the European project to protect, not to diminish, the fundamental rights of all citizens… The European Parliament specifically seeks to fully safeguard the rights concerning family reunion, comprehensive healthcare, voting rights in local elections, the transferability of (social) rights, and the rules governing permanent residence (including the right to leave the UK without losing this status). Simultaneously, we seek to avoid an administrative burden for citizens and want proposals which are intrusive to people’s privacy off the table, e.g. proposed systematic criminal checks. Last but not least, the European Parliament wants the withdrawal agreement to be directly enforceable and to include a mechanism in which the European Court of Justice can play its full role.”

For the Parliament to be satisfied, as it must be, movement is required on both sides, but I suspect that it will be harder for the UK Government, not least because of the Prime Minister’s continuing aversion to the European Court of Justice. In previous debates, I have described it as a fetish, but whatever it is, it is a problem. It is not just this Government’s Achilles heel; it is their Achilles legs, arms and body too, and it creates problems in considering directly the rights of UK citizens resident in EU member states.

If the European Court of Justice no longer has any jurisdiction over the UK’s treatment of EU nationals, a reciprocal agreement would work the same way for UK nationals in Europe. We are therefore leaving UK nationals vulnerable to the domestic laws and national courts of member states, without any protections. We need an international referee to ensure that countries comply with their obligations on citizens’ rights. The EU demands that it be the ECJ, but the UK Government say no, so what should it be? What is likely to be acceptable to both? The conundrum not only dogs this discussion but is a problem across the piece.

Turning to another problem, the UK’s creation of settled status comes saddled with a range of problems that, if reciprocated, will seriously compromise the rights currently enjoyed by UK nationals in the EU. The UK condition that EU settled status in the UK can be rescinded after two years’ leave is unacceptable to the EU, as well as to me and many others. To understand why, think of it in reverse: imagine a UK academic from my constituency, Cambridge, who has been living and working in Rome and who is offered the opportunity to do a different job at a UK university, on a temporary basis, for a couple of years. Would they take it, knowing that they might not be able to return to their home in Rome? That is not a hypothetical example but an everyday occurrence.

To be at the leading edge of research and study, we need global flexibility. It is not just about economics; there are many situations in which someone might have to move for a period of two years or more, such as for family reasons. We must think through the real-life consequences of the proposals. When we do, we can see the problem.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

I apologise, Mr Streeter; I too cannot stay for the whole debate. A constituent of mine has told me about her son, who is married to a German woman and lives in Germany with her and their two young children. She says that it is all very unsettling. Does my hon. Friend agree that the lack of legal certainty is causing great distress, disrupting family life and interrupting people’s ability to pursue their careers?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I agree. The human cost has been completely underestimated. Whatever the final outcomes, the stress and unhappiness being caused now are real.

As I have said, the Government maintain that reciprocal arrangements are the way forward and will best guarantee the rights of UK citizens in the EU, but if our treatment of EU nationals here is seen to be ungenerous, where will that leave our people in the European Union? It need not even be by design. In the past month, some EU citizens in the UK have received mistakenly sent letters threatening them with deportation. We are told it was an error, but clearly we do not want that to be reciprocated. Sadly, the 3 Million campaign has been compiling compelling evidence of discrimination against EU nationals across employment, housing and a range of services ever since the referendum. We do not want that reciprocated either.

Last week, the Home Office’s immigration plans were leaked. Many people—rightly, in my view—reacted with outrage. Are we really going to restrict the rights of EU family members to enter and remain in the UK, and police that with biometrics? Is that the kind of treatment that we want reciprocated?

Oral Answers to Questions

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

We are, and we will continue to do so.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

Will the Minister please reassure the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England that he values their collaboration with their EU counterparts and that he will prioritise doing everything he can to ensure that that collaboration continues?

[Mr Walker]

I refer the hon. Lady to the paper we published this week, which sets that out clearly. We see a huge advantage both to the UK and the EU in continuing that collaboration, and we look forward to discussing it as we move towards talks on the future partnership.

Brexit and Foreign Affairs

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

No.

That means leaving the customs union, so that Britain will, for the first time in over 40 years, be able to take full advantage of growing markets across the world and determine a trade policy that is fashioned not around the interests of 28 countries but around those of one country. We will have a trade policy that suits this country and this country alone.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Davis]

No.

The European Commission itself says that 90% of the future growth in world trade will come from outside the European Union. This has already been reflected in the long-term decline in the share of British goods that go to the European Union, while our global trade has increased dramatically.

--- Later in debate ---

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

The people of Bristol West are, mostly, remainers and proud of it, and we want the closest possible relationship with the EU, but my constituents also want me to press the Government on global concerns—climate change, trade justice and the refugee crisis. Climate change is a clear and present danger, and global temperatures have risen to 1° warmer than pre-industrial revolution levels. Change across the world is accelerating and our commitment under the Paris 2015 agreement is to limit further rises to no more than 1°. We need carbon dioxide emissions to peak before 2020 and fall to zero by 2070 by weaning ourselves off fossil fuels, and we need to press our international ally across the Atlantic also to honour its commitment.

An unprecedented 63.5 million people are forcibly displaced worldwide due to conflict. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on refugees, I spend a lot of time on refugee policy: only a fraction of refugees ever come to the UK and the global system is broken because, designed for cold war circumstances, it leaves refugees either trapped in their own country or stuck for years in camps in neighbouring countries, without work. Small wonder that some will, out of desperation, risk very dangerous journeys to other shores.

This is also economically and geopolitically dangerous. If refugees are not allowed to work, they cannot provide for themselves. They also lose skills and experience, which will be necessary to rebuild their own countries post-conflict to help return them to stability.

In Uganda, refugees are allowed and supported to work or to start businesses. We have much to learn from other countries about responding to refugees, and we also have much to contribute.

The Secretary of State referred earlier to doing trade deals for the benefit of one country only. On behalf of the people of Bristol West, I urge him and his colleagues to think more widely and about least-developed countries in particular, and to integrate environmental protection, workers’ rights, human rights and the impact on developing countries into all trade deals.

In conclusion, we in Bristol West want the Government not to become so distracted by Brexit that they neglect vital action on climate change, we want reform of the international refugee system, and we want trade agreements to contribute to, not detract from, social justice, because this beautiful planet and everything and everyone on it, from humans to microbes, cannot wait.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Oral Answers to Questions

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

The hon. Lady will know that the Government have already guaranteed the current level of CAP funding until 2020. I assure her that the Government will make sure that the interests of agriculture are at the very forefront of our calculations. British agriculture is a huge asset to this country, and we intend to protect it.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

2. When he plans to publish the Government’s plan for the UK’s relationship with the EU after the UK has left the EU.

[The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Mr David Davis)]

I ask the House to forgive my voice. It is just wear and tear, not emotion.

The Prime Minister’s speech set out a comprehensive plan that includes all our central negotiating objectives. She confirmed yesterday that we will publish the plan in a White Paper. It will answer key questions that have been asked on our approach to the single market, the customs union and the type of trading relationship we are seeking. It will be widely welcomed as a serious and ambitious vision of a new, positive and constructive partnership for Britain and the European Union that will be good for Britain and good for the rest of Europe.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I thank the Secretary of State for that answer, but will he please explain to the aerospace industry, the health service, the universities and other major employers in my constituency, which account for thousands of jobs, how they should have confidence in this country’s ability to negotiate beneficial trade deals when we have barely any specialist trade negotiators and we have had no experience of negotiating trade agreements for decades?

[Mr Davis]

It does not help the hon. Lady’s own industries, which are very important, if she talks them down. Let me say to the Opposition that it is not only the Government who think this deal is eminently achievable. Just recently, a former EU Trade Commissioner said that the trade deal between the UK and EU can be done in a “very reasonable” period of time—[Interruption.] Let me get to the point. He said:

“I am reading everywhere that it takes five, six, seven…years to do a trade negotiation… Yes that’s true—but it’s not for technical reasons, it’s because you can’t get an agreement. Technically you could make an agreement within a very reasonable period of time because we know each other.”

The point he was making is that there is not a technical constraint, and there are quite enough negotiators in Whitehall to do the job we are talking about.