David Davis
MP for Goole and Pocklington · Conservative · United Kingdom
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I start by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) on putting a Bill in front of the House that has support from literally everybody in the Chamber?”
“The Post Office Horizon scandal highlighted the institutional instinct to find a convenient scapegoat. Innocent people paid the price, while the institution sought to protect itself. If the Thirlwall inquiry asks too narrow a set of questions, systemic NHS failures will go unexamined.”
“Last month’s sentencing of Nicola Sturgeon’s husband exposed the real reasons behind the Scottish Government’s persecution of Alex Salmond. From 2010 to 2022, Peter Murrell abused his position to embezzle almost £500,000 from the SNP to buy luxury items. He used SNP money to buy a £33,000 Volkswagen Golf.”
“The consultants also reported that in the two months since the change infants have been sick but recovered as expected.” The report highlighted deficiencies in staffing levels, leadership and communication, but, in the trial, it was not shown to the jury—they knew nothing of it.”
“One of the nurses let go later described it as “the decimation of the Nursing and Midwifery service”, adding that “eight registered nurses...were replaced with nursery nurses...unqualified staff are replacing qualified staff”.”
“There was little space, cots and incubators were stored in corridors, and mothers struggled to find somewhere to breastfeed their babies. Susan Gilby, the hospital’s chief executive between 2018 and 2022, later described the unit as “dark, dingy and cramped”, providing a “less than ideal” environment to work in.”
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“There are two answers to my hon. Friend. First, we will try to get the nature of the implementation phase agreed as soon as possible so that, as the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) said, businesses can take it into account. Secondly, my hon. Friend is right that such a transition phase will be triggered only once we have completed the deal itself. We cannot carry on negotiating through it, because our negotiating position during a transition phase would not be very strong.”
“Yes, UK citizens in the EU will of course maintain the protection of the ECJ, because by being inside the EU they will be within the ECJ’s remit.”
“Mr Falconer works at the Department for International Trade, of course, but we are in constant communication with him. With respect to the sequencing of decisions on the implementation phase and the ongoing relationship, my hon. Friend is correct in theory, but in practice we need the implementation phase to be decided early for it to be beneficial to a large number of companies. In his response to the statement, the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) pointed out that some companies will have to make decisions at the end of this year or in the first quarter of next year so that they are able to carry out any necessary changes, so we want to get things under way as quickly as possible.”
“First, the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), had a meeting with the industry this morning, and not for the first time. I have met industry representatives a couple of times as well. Secondly, part of the point of the implementation phase is that it gives them an extra two years of decision making, and that is well within their decision cycle. Thirdly, as for giving a blank cheque, that is Labour’s policy.”
“The Home Office is already working on that and we will be publishing a White Paper in due course and bringing a Bill to that effect before the House.”
“One thing that I will say to the hon. Gentleman about his fantasy economics—I can put it no better than that—is that people like him have been talking down the economy for two years. They said that there would be recession in the economy immediately following a Brexit decision, but the reverse has been true: we have higher employment than we have ever had; lower levels of unemployment than we have had for 30 or 40 years; and the economy is growing as fast as it has done.”
“It is a good question, but it is not really for me; it is a question for those on the Labour Front Bench. My hon. Friend is quite right that it does not hold up as a negotiating strategy.”
“I have been meeting mayors of the major cities at my behest and not at anybody else’s, starting with the Mayors of London, Liverpool, Manchester and Teesside and others will follow.”
“I must say, with respect to the hon. Lady, that that is news to me. If she sends the individual case to me, I will take it up with the Home Office for her.”
“The first thing that I point to is the right hon. Gentleman’s wonderful selective choice of fantasies—none of them is true. He has ignored the fact that inward investment in the UK was at record levels in the first half of this year. As he raises the point about how a letter of his came to the attention of Guido Fawkes—he did it in a point of order yesterday and has alluded to it again today—let me tell him that that letter came to me via a journalist who already had full knowledge of its entire contents. I am afraid that he has no apologies coming from me on that either.”
“The United Kingdom will no longer participate in the EEA agreement once we leave the European Union. The United Kingdom is a party to the EEA agreement in its capacity as an EU member state, so on exit day the EEA agreement will cease to operate in respect of the UK. It will no longer have any practical relevance to the United Kingdom. We are considering what steps, if any, we might need to take to confirm formally our withdrawal from the EEA agreement as a matter of international law.”
“There is actually agreement that when the UK ceases to be a member of the EU, the EEA agreement will no longer operate in respect of the United Kingdom. As such, the Government’s legal position is clear: article 127 does not need to be triggered for the agreement to cease to have effect, but we are looking at it just to make sure, for clarity purposes, that we meet its requirements.”
“Yes, my right hon. Friend is quite right. The simple truth is that membership of the European Free Trade Association, for example, which would be one way to retain EEA membership, would do exactly that: it would keep us within the acquis, and it would keep us within the requirements of free movement, albeit with some limitations, but none of those have worked so far. In many ways, it is the worst of all outcomes. We did consider it—I gave it some considerable thought, maybe as an interim measure—but it seemed to me to be more complicated, more difficult and less beneficial than other options.”
“Well, the heavily redacted letter was not from me, so I am not entirely sure what the right hon. Gentleman is referring to, but the answer, generally, is no.”
“My hon. Friend makes exactly the right point: we are able to make trade deals once we leave the European Union, and that will give us enormous benefits, because as the European Commission itself admits, 90% of world trade will be outside the EU, not within it, in the coming decades.”
“Now, our position is very clear. The transition arrangements will meet three different requirements: to provide time for the British Government, if need be, to create new regulatory agencies and so on; time for companies to make their arrangements to deal with new regulation; and time for other countries to make arrangements on, for example, new customs proposals. That is what will be required. That is why we need to be as close as we are to our current arrangements. It does not mean that, in the long run, we are in either the customs union or the single market.”
“I did that only a couple of days ago. I will come back to the point, but for the House’s interest, I will read a small part of a LabourList article—I read LabourList all the time, of course—by the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), who opened this question. He said: “On Sunday Keir Starmer used an article in The Observer to call time on the ambiguity that had come to define Labour’s approach to Brexit since the referendum”— the ambiguity, right? He said, “It was an approach”—this is the best bit— “that…served us well on 8 June”. What was that ambiguity? Tell leavers you want to leave; tell remainers you want to remain. That ambiguity, of course, could not last, and, as the hon. Gentleman said, it was never sustainable. That is the ambiguity of the right hon. and learned Gentleman who has just asked his question.”
“That is a very legitimate and sensible question. I believe that the benefits of a transitional arrangement go both ways—they are symmetrical. They apply equally to France, Holland, Germany or Denmark as they do to us. That is some of the read-back we have been getting. I know that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has been travelling around Europe himself and he will no doubt have picked up that same read-back. We are finding that the Commission is open to discussion of transition. We have raised it only briefly at each of the last two meetings because it does not fit within the current four groups of negotiation, but I think there is a very good prospect.”
“Both sides in the negotiation are clear about the fact that we want to achieve the best possible outcome and the strongest possible partnership. We have said repeatedly that, to achieve that end, both sides must demonstrate a dynamic and flexible approach to negotiations. In papers published by the Government, for instance, we have made it clear that we stand ready to protect the voting rights of EU nationals living in the UK. There will be give and take as the negotiations progress, but the destination is clear: a deep and special partnership that sees both parties emerge strong and prosperous, capable of projecting our shared values, leading in the world and demonstrating our resolve to protect the security of our citizens.”
“As my hon. Friend will understand—he heard me say this earlier—we considered that in some detail before the Lancaster House speech. We concluded that it did not meet the requirements for which the British people voted and that it would not be as easy to negotiate as an alternative bespoke transitional arrangement might be.”
“I think this must be the 20th time I have said to the right hon. Gentleman that I am not going to negotiate from this Dispatch Box, and he should know that. What I will say to him is that the transitional arrangements as we have described are an implementation period—or phase, or any of all the other different words used for it—and are there for one purpose: to ensure, in his words, that we avoid a cliff edge. That is not just true of us: it is not just the UK that has come to this conclusion—some time ago as it turns out—but so have the other members of the European Union, and one of the things we have been doing in the past six to nine months is ensuring that they understand from their point of view precisely how valuable to them a transitional arrangement will be.”
“We have made that very plain: the words used are that we expect to respect our international obligations but also to have our rights respected. That point has been made very clear. One of the reasons why the last negotiating round was perhaps a little tenser than the previous one is that we were making it very plain what we judged the legal basis to be, and that was not always comfortable.”
“As ever, the right hon. Gentleman makes a good point, and that does mean that we will want to ensure there is a single transition, not two different transitions in and out of the transition period. That is why, as the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) quoted me as saying, I said we want the transition arrangement to be as close as possible to the current circumstance. It will be remembered, too, that when I responded to the right hon. and learned Gentleman I said there are three effective sets of criteria: one, time for the Government to accommodate; two, time for other Governments to accommodate; but, importantly too in his context, time after the decisions for financial services and other industries to do their own accommodations.”
“My hon. Friend raises a point that we have already raised with Michel and the remainder of the team. At the moment, the Union’s negotiating team are taking the approach of stressing what they term legal responsibilities, and we are challenging them. When we get to the end of that, we will make some decisions about political and moral responsibilities, and also negotiating outcomes, and that is where the decision will, I suppose, be made.”
“I do not think the hon. Gentleman was paying attention the day before yesterday: I said to him then that blue sky thinking, talking to an American audience, is a description of an imaginative approach.”
“Well, my right hon. Friend can be as gentle with me as she likes. The simple truth is that, before the Lancaster House speech, we went through a process of considering what the best negotiating strategy would be, in some detail. We looked at who would have to negotiate with, where the compromises would have to be made and what the gains would be. We came to the conclusion that the route we are now taking, involving discussions with the member states initially and now with the Union and a transition based on maintaining the important components of what we currently have, is the best way to do it.”
“We aim to get the right agreement for the United Kingdom and the European Union. Government officials are working at pace, and we have said repeatedly that both parties will need to demonstrate a dynamic and flexible approach in each negotiation round. Flexibility and creativity are needed from both sides, and we have already said that we are willing to meet as frequently as required. We want to reach an agreement about our future partnership by the end of March 2019. From that point, we believe that a time-limited interim period will be in the mutual interest of the United Kingdom and the European Union, allowing people and businesses in the United Kingdom and the European Union to adjust to the new arrangements.”
“Yes, my hon. Friend is exactly right. The Bill that we will debate later today is designed with exactly that in mind. The unique nature of the free trade agreement that we are seeking to agree with the European Union is that we all start from exactly the same standards. The previous question related to maintaining the same standards for labour law and other matters, but those standards are actually already better. My hon. Friend is right that our unique position is the key to getting a fast, effective and wealth-creating trade agreement.”
“I think I should say, in the interest of maintaining amity across the negotiating table, that Mr Barnier clarified that he did not intend to say “educate”. He meant that he wanted to bring everybody up to speed on the benefits, as he sees it, of the single market. Both sides want to achieve the best possible outcome and the strongest possible partnership for the future, and that is what we intend to do. It is in neither side’s interest for there to be a cliff edge for businesses or a threat to stability. The UK and the EU will work together to agree provisions for an interim period that will allow people and businesses in both the UK and the EU to adjust in a smooth and orderly way to new arrangements. That will minimise disruption, give as much certainty as possible and meet the wishes of my hon. Friend’s constituents.”
“At the moment, I can talk only to the discussions within the European Union negotiating group. From the beginning we were very keen to start on this as quickly as possible. We understand, of course, that the conclusion we get will be dependent, to some extent, on all the other decisions on borders. How much special arrangement we have to make will depend on how open the borders are generally. We have made very good progress. At the last round in particular, the Commission was concerned that continuing with the common travel area would impinge on European Union citizens’ rights. We have persuaded the Commission that that is not true, and it has basically accepted our argument.”
“Perhaps I will organise a visit for the hon. Gentleman to see Mr Barnier himself. We have taken action in all those areas. We have taken action to underpin the funding of universities. In industry, we have seen the Nissan arrangements. We have talked to the financial services sector about what we expect to happen, and we have particularly talked about an implementation period with them in mind—not just them, but them in particular. Plenty of action is being taken to improve the certainty and clarity on where we are going.”
“Since our last Question Time, the Government have made important progress towards delivering the result of the European referendum and grasping the opportunities that Brexit can provide. In the negotiations with our European counterparts, we have found important areas where we agree—on pensions, healthcare and Northern Ireland, for example—and we are now working on those areas where we do not agree. We have provided more clarity by publishing papers on a range of issues. Finally, later today we will debate the repeal Bill, which will give effect to the result of the referendum while providing the legal certainty that will avoid unnecessary disruption. I believe the Bill should command the support of all those who believe in securing a smooth and orderly exit from the European Union.”
“No, I will not. The vote of the British people was very clear: they wanted to leave the European Union and take back control, of both borders and laws. That would not be possible if we simply stayed inside the single market under the current terms.”
“It would probably be a unique foray at this Dispatch Box for a Minister to admit error, but let me say this to the hon. Gentleman: I said at the beginning that this is a negotiation; it will take time and go in directions that we do not necessarily expect, and there will be give and take in it. That is as close as I can get.”
“I am afraid that my hon. Friend is precisely right. The purpose of the Bill is to establish continuity, for several reasons. The first is to provide certainty for business, an issue raised by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). The second is to ensure our ability to carry out a free trade deal which will be unique in the world. The third is to underpin all the rights and privileges that we have promised to our country down the years, including employment rights, consumer rights and environmental rights. All those things are vital in the national interest, so he is exactly right.”
“My hon. Friend is exactly right about that, and she allows me to reiterate one other point: all the talk from Opposition Members has been about changing things in this Bill. The Bill is about maintaining continuity; it is about keeping in place the aims and purposes of all the European law that we currently have—and will have the day after we leave.”
“The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point and I suspect it would have been in his question earlier if he had had the chance to ask it. The simple truth is, as I have said, that we are starting from the aim of maintaining as much continuity as is necessary to anything that might change in the final settlement. So we will do that. Because we are not in the European Union at that point—legally, we will not be—we will not be formally members of the single market and the customs union. We may well seek a customs agreement for that period and a similar arrangement on the single market provisions, but we cannot make that decision ourselves; there is a negotiation to be carried out with the EU.”
“I would say two things to the hon. Lady: first, we will do that as soon as is feasible within the constraints of the negotiation; and secondly, if she is concerned about business confidence, I say to her that the best way to guarantee stability is to vote for the Bill this afternoon.”
“Secondly, the Bill takes a snapshot of the body of EU law that currently forms part of the United Kingdom legal system and ensures that it will continue to apply in the United Kingdom after we leave. This is to ensure that, wherever possible, the same rules and laws will apply the day after exit as they did before. Without that step, a large part of our law would fall away when the European Communities Act is repealed. But simply preserving European Union law is not enough. There will be many areas where the preserved law does not work as it should. So, as its third key element, the Bill provides Ministers in this Parliament and in the devolved legislatures with powers to make statutory instruments to address the problems that would arise when we leave the European Union.”
“Let me start with a brief summary of the Bill before going on to set out its key provisions in more depth. The Bill is designed to provide maximum possible legal certainty and continuity while restoring control to the United Kingdom. It does so in three broad steps. First, it removes from the statute book the key legislation passed by this Parliament in 1972—the European Communities Act 1972. That Act gave European Union law supreme status over law made in this country. It is therefore right that it be removed from our statute book on the day the UK leaves the European Union, bringing to an end the supremacy of European law over laws made in the United Kingdom.”
“I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. When I introduced the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill earlier this year, I said that that Bill was just the beginning—it was the beginning of a process to ensure that the decision made by the people in June last year is honoured. Today we begin the next step in the historic process of honouring that decision. Put simply, this Bill is an essential step. Although it does not take us out of the European Union—that is a matter for the article 50 process—it does ensure that, on the day we leave, businesses will know where they stand, workers’ rights will be upheld and consumers will remain protected. The Bill is vital to ensuring that, as we leave, we do so in an orderly manner.”
“In a moment. These powers allow Ministers to make those changes to ensure that the statute book works on day one. This will be a major shared undertaking across the United Kingdom.”
“I will give way to both right hon. Gentlemen in a few minutes. Following this, it will be for United Kingdom legislators to pass laws, and for the United Kingdom courts to adjudicate those laws. The Bill enables us to leave the European Union in the smoothest and most orderly way possible. It is the most significant piece of legislation to be considered by this House for some time, and it will rightly be scrutinised clause by clause, line by line on the Floor of the House.”
“I will give way in a moment. I stand ready to listen to those who offer improvements to the Bill in the spirit of preparing our statute book for withdrawal from the European Union. The right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) likes to remind me of my past incarnation as a Back Benchers’ champion and my dedication to holding the Government to account. I have not changed my views one jot. Let me be clear: this Bill does only what is necessary for a smooth exit and to provide stability. However, as I have repeatedly said, I welcome and encourage contributions from those who approach the task in good faith and in a spirit of collaboration. All of us, as legislators, have a shared interest in making the Bill a success and in the national interest.”
“Again, I will go into that in some detail. There is one exception to this, but the primary aim behind the Bill is to maintain policy as it is now. The only exception to that is under the withdrawal arrangements, and that will be time-determined and limited. I will detail that in a second.”
“I have to tell the right hon. Gentleman that I do not read the Evening Standard —it sounds like with good reason. I have to tell him that if I am going to take lectures on rule by decree, it will not be from the editor of the Evening Standard .”
“The Bill must be on the statute book in good time ahead of our withdrawal so that the statutory instruments my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) referred to, which will flow from the Bill, can be made in time for exit day—the House will have time to look at them—and so that we are in a position to take control of our laws from day one. The Bill provides a clear basis for our negotiation with the European Union by ensuring continuity and clarity in our laws without prejudice to the ongoing negotiations. Without this legislation, a smooth and orderly exit would be impossible. The shape of any interim period will need to be determined by the negotiations, but we cannot await the completion of negotiations before ensuring that there is legal certainty and continuity at the point of our exit. To do so would be reckless.”
“My right hon. Friend is entirely right—it is a point I will elaborate on later—and the editor of the Evening Standard should know that from his own experience. The key point of this Bill is to avoid significant and serious gaps in our statute book. It ensures that consumers can be clear about their protection, employees can be clear about their rights, and businesses can be clear about the rules that regulate their trade. Workers’ rights and consumer and environmental protections will be enforceable through the UK courts, which are renowned the world over. The Bill provides certainty as to how the law will apply after we leave the European Union, and ensures that individuals and businesses will continue to be able to find redress when problems arise. Without this Bill, all those things would be put at risk.”
“Again, I will come to that later, but if the hon. Lady remembers, when the White Paper was presented to this House I said to the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras, my opposite number, that if any powers were missing, people should come to the Government, tell me and tell the House, and we would put that right. I have not had a single comment since on that.”
“I will make some progress now, and I will give way a little later. I am conscious of the point made by the Father of the House that time will be tight at least on this day. I will give way as much as is reasonable, but I do not want to dilate too long.”