Oral Answers to Questions

Vicky Foxcroft Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for the tone in which he put his question, but we have a dual responsibility. We have a responsibility within our own country to maintain a high moral stand in what we do—I see this as a moral question—and, on the other hand, we also have a responsibility to our citizens abroad, and it is a legal responsibility as well as a moral one. We will get this resolved, and I give him an undertaking that we will resolve it as fast as we possibly can.

[Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

15. What assessment he has made, as part of his Department’s plans for negotiations on the UK leaving the EU, of the potential merits of different forms of trade dispute mechanisms with the EU.

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

We recognise that the large majority of trade agreements involve some form of dispute resolution or enforcement mechanism, and there are a range of models for dispute resolution mechanisms in international trade agreements. We have been clear that we will bring an end to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the United Kingdom. The dispute resolution mechanisms adopted as part of our future trading relationship with the EU and other international parties will be a matter for negotiation.

[Vicky Foxcroft]

The Prime Minister has said that she wants a comprehensive free trade agreement with the EU and that, in future, our laws will be interpreted by British judges in British courts, but every comprehensive free trade agreement has some sort of independent trade dispute resolution mechanism. Does the Secretary of State agree that this sort of inconsistency needs to be ironed out by rigorous parliamentary scrutiny of the Prime Minister’s plan?

[Mr Davis]

It is not an inconsistency but a lack of understanding on the part of the Opposition. As I have said, there are a range of models and a large number of international trade agreements with arbitration mechanisms, but they are just that. They are agreed arbitration mechanisms; they are not mechanisms that bring the influence of the European Court into all parts of British society—that is what is going to be resolved by leaving the European Union.