Article 50 Extension

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Keir Starmer

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

I suppose that I accept the proposition that one person’s short may be another person’s long, but the words of the Minister for the Cabinet Office did not come in isolation or out of the blue; they came in the middle of a debate, which was quite heated at times, about what the motion meant and how we should interpret it. I do not think that anyone who was in that debate would, in all honesty, doubt what the Minister for the Cabinet Office was saying and what he meant by it, and I took

“a short and, critically, one-off extension”—[Official Report, 14 March 2019; Vol. 656, c. 566.]

to mean an extension for up to three months with a cliff-edge at the end.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman not find it extremely regrettable that the Government’s strategy on such an important issue for the nation is to bamboozle everybody, so that nobody knows what was meant or what was said?

[Keir Starmer]

I certainly agree that this is not the first time that most of the people voting for a motion think it to be pretty clear, only to find that what it meant is disputed within a week.

Future Relationship Between the UK and the EU

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Keir Starmer

Wednesday 18th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

This must be my failure to comprehend. There is an arrangement whereby tariffs are applied at the border and accounted for. The UK is not proposing that the EU applies the UK tariffs and trade policy at its border for goods intended for the UK, so how is it going to account for them?

[Wera Hobhouse]

Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman share my suspicion that the proposals are designed to be so complicated and difficult that the EU will find it very hard to engage with them, so that time will go by and we will end up crashing out without a deal, as has always been the Government’s intention?

[Keir Starmer]

I am grateful for that intervention, because it demonstrates why this is so important. Unless there is a customs arrangement that works for manufacturing, there is not an arrangement that works for manufacturing. The Government last night voted down an amendment to say, “If we cannot make something else work, we will have a customs union.” So if this does not work, there is nothing for manufacturing. Equally, if this does not work, there is nothing for Northern Ireland.