Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland: Border Arrangements Debate
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Wes Streeting
Main Page: Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)Department Debates - View all Wes Streeting's debates with the Cabinet Office
Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland: Border Arrangements
Wes Streeting Excerpts(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Lidington
What we learned at the end of 2017 was that despite all the predications about the imminent collapse of the negotiating process at that time, with political will, both from London and from our 27 partners and the European Commission, an agreement could be reached. That provides a good basis on which to move further forward now.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
Sir John Major and Tony Blair warned during the EU referendum campaign that this would be an issue, and I am sorry to say that what the Minister for the Cabinet Office, who is a serious person, has said today at the Dispatch Box is simply implausible. We are not talking about a Back Bencher or the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for paper clips; we are talking about the Foreign Secretary, who has a central role at the heart of the Brexit negotiations. He is entertaining, in memos to the Prime Minister, the prospect of a hard border, which the Minister for the Cabinet Office says has been ruled out. So the only question, which he has not answered, is: if what he says is the settled position of the Government, why is the Foreign Secretary setting this out in the memo? If the Foreign Secretary says he is going to publish the memo, when is he going to do it? If the Minister cannot answer those questions, should the Foreign Secretary not have had the guts to come here to answer for himself and clean up his own mess?
Mr Lidington
The Government’s policy is as I have set out. We are now, at the very start of the negotiating process, bringing forward ideas about how we would wish to give practical application to the commitments that we have entered into and developing them internally among the Government. The Prime Minister will say more about that on Friday.