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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“The hon. Gentleman says that this has taken seven months, but we have been in the European Union for 40 years. This is about reversing—well, not reversing but amending—and dealing with 40 years’ accumulated policy and law. He mentioned Second Reading, but that Bill will trigger the process. It does no more than to put into effect the people’s decision of 23 June last year, so I cannot see how he thinks the publication of the White Paper after Second Reading is problematic.”
“My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) is another Member of this House who has given a great deal of time and dedication to this issue. On migration, it is my job to bring the decision back to the House, but it is not my job to make the decisions thereafter. However, it is clear to me that the policies for controlling migration after our exit will be designed to further our national interest. Britain is a science superpower. We are the leading scientific centre in Europe, and as a result we will want to encourage the competition for talent to come here. The same will apply in finance, engineering, medicine and all the other areas in which skills are at a premium. We will want to attract those people, so we do not expect our policies to have any deleterious effects on industry at all.”
“Let me just finish my answer. The point is made in the policy paper that we want to have a customs agreement. That will follow directly as a result of the free trade agreement. If we are successful in getting low or zero tariffs in the free trade agreement, and no non-tariff barriers, we should succeed in getting a customs agreement that reflects that, and that makes it very straightforward to continue trading with Europe.”
“My hon. Friend is exactly right. That is the aim of our policy. He is also right to suggest that, at the end, the House will be able to hold the Government to account and make a meaningful decision about the policy, but that will not be the only opportunity. There will be many points along the way when we will debate every policy issue that arises from the process—from customs agreements to immigration. The House will be very much in control of that.”
“This is my sixth statement to the House in less than six months— [ Interruption. ] Let me finish. The House will have the opportunity to vote on any number of pieces of legislation before we get to the end and then will have a vote to decide whether what it gets is acceptable. I cannot see how it can be made more meaningful than that.”
“If my hon. Friend reads the rest of that chapter, he will see that we will exclude ourselves from the common commercial policy and common external tariff, which amounts to exactly what he says.”
“The hon. Lady is absolutely right. The Government’s approach is to maintain every single piece of employment protection that exists now, which incidentally is much better than that of most European countries, and to enhance it. There should be no concern about that at all.”
“That is part of the point of doing this. We are talking about not only residents’ rights, but the right of access to healthcare. That matters both for Europeans in Britain and for Britons abroad. I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend.”
“I am not familiar with that commentary, but I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s view about the chapter on the relationship with Ireland. One of the most important parts of the last seven month’s preparation has been striking a relationship with Ireland that ensures that we underpin the peace process, maintain the stability of Northern Ireland, keep an open border, and so on. It is incumbent on the British Government to be as helpful as we can to the Irish Government because they are in the most difficult position, so that is what we are doing.”
“Generally speaking, a most favoured nation arrangement applies under WTO rules, but countries are generally allowed to make free trade agreements at whatever level they seek. We want to ensure that as many of the existing EU free trade agreements carry straight over, which will also be lower than MFN rates.”
“The Government’s policy is that migration will be at a sustainable level. The point to understand here is that such decisions are made on a year-by-year basis. It is not Government policy to make the British economy suffer as a result of labour or talent shortages or anything else. It is perfectly proper for a Government to want to control their own migration policy and not leave it open-ended. The solution to the problem the hon. Lady cites is not just not managing the problem.”
“My hon. Friend refers to the need to negotiate ongoing arrangements in parallel with the departure arrangements. As he says, article 50 refers to having regard to ongoing arrangements, and a negotiation on departure arrangements cannot be concluded before the ongoing arrangements have been concluded. I have already made that point to Michel Barnier, my opposite number, and I think the Prime Minister has made that point to a number of her opposite numbers around the European Union. This will be the first issue that we need to resolve at the beginning of the negotiations, so my hon. Friend is quite right.”
“I suspect that the final vote here will be before the final ratification in the European Union. Its ratification process is much slower than ours will be.”
“I am not quite sure what my hon. Friend means by formal reporting. I have visited the Exiting the European Union Committee once and will be appearing in front of it again, and this, as I said, is my sixth statement to the House. We come to the House at every possible opportunity to tell Members what is going on. There will be subsequent debates, including substantive debates on policy. There will undoubtedly be other Brexit debates—more are planned already—so there is no question that the House will not be fully informed. That we are somehow not paying attention to the Opposition is an illusion—a chimera—that they like to run out. We have given them a White Paper and answers about the customs union and the single market. I do not know how much more open I can be without being dissected.”
“The Government’s thinking on Brexit is very clear. If someone disagrees with it, that does not mean that it does not exist. That is the problem that SNP Members have had all the way through this process. They just do not like it— [ Interruption. ] Sure, half a page is blank. Wonderful. I think that is the case in every book I own.”
“The answer to the right hon. Gentleman’s first question is no, because, again, membership of EFTA would put us within the reach of European regulations and the European Courts. Frankly, that would take away what influence we do have. We have laid out in the White Paper what is the best relationship, which is a customs agreement and a free trade agreement. Bear in mind that we are starting from a position of identity. He makes a good point about maintaining that identity, and we will publish proposals on that in due course, but this is what we are going to do. It is perfectly possible to go the route I am talking about without rejecting the decision of the British people on 23 June last year.”
“The Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), gave evidence to the House of Lords on precisely that—indeed, on all the dependent territories—and it can be taken as read that we will rigorously protect their interests.”
“In these debates, membership of the single market and access to the single market are often conflated. What British business wants is unfettered access, and what German, French and Italian business wants is unfettered access to our market. That is what we seek to produce.”
“As we are coming out of the European Union, that will happen almost by definition, but that is not to say that we will not be making new arrangements. The Prüm framework covers data exchange, DNA and so on, and it is very clear in our minds that we will be making new arrangements to keep terrorism, crime and so on under control. We will no doubt protect my hon. Friend’s constituents from the ECJ.”
“There is only so much I can do in a limited statement. The Minister of State has already met the LGA, and he has sent out invitations to local councils so that he can talk to them. In the last statement, or maybe in the one before, I said that I am willing to meet the mayors of the various regions of the country after they are elected in the next round. It must be taken as read that we are not putting the regions to one side. The very first public meeting I had after becoming Secretary of State was with people in Blackburn, Lancashire.”
“I assume that my hon. Friend is talking about our permanent representative to the European Union, who has 120 brilliant staff, and they all work for me. I do not know what our representational arrangements will be, but he is referring to an ambassador to Belgium, an ambassador to NATO—I assume—and an ambassador to UKRep. We will undoubtedly have close relationships with the European Union thereafter, so it will be a pretty sizeable embassy I should think, but it will not be what it is now.”
“As it stands—as far as I can see, having gone through this quite carefully—once we are outside the EU, the question of whether we automatically cease to be a member of the EEA becomes a legal empty vessel. We will look at that. If we do propose to withdraw from the EEA, we will come back and tell the House.”
“I have got the message and, incidentally, so have the leaders of most of the countries with the most people here. They also understand that we have to protect the rights of British people at the very same time as we protect the rights of their citizens. There is no question that it is not going to happen. The question is when it will happen, and we are trying to do it as quickly as possible.”
“We are not going to have hard borders. I will take the question on two different levels. First, the common travel area has existed since 1923 and, in that respect nothing will change. On goods, there will be the softest, most invisible and most frictionless border we can find. There is a lot of technology these days, ranging from automatic number plate recognition through to the tagging of containers, with trusted trader arrangements across the border, and such things operate between Norway and Sweden, the US and Canada, and so on—countries with very amicable relations and very open borders—and we will do the same with Ireland.”
“My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Trade has already been in touch with the most important countries to us—South Korea and others like it—and they all seem very keen both to maintain grandfather rights and to improve on the deals and make them much more tailored and specific to both our interests.”
“As the great repeal Bill will pass through European law—the acquis communautaire—in its original wording, it might refer to European institutions when it should refer to British institutions. For example, it might say that local government has to publish its procurement contracts in the Official Journal of the European Union , which would no longer be appropriate—it would be more appropriate to publish them on the Government website. Secondary legislation will be principally aimed at such technical concerns. Major areas of policy change will primarily be addressed in primary legislation, which is why we cited those two examples.”
“And we fully intend to do so, as we think it is in the interests of both ourselves and the European Union, because we do not want anything that causes instability in the eurozone, any more than we want anything that damages the City.”
“The hon. Lady worked hard to get her soundbite out. The White Paper contains a whole section on justice and home affairs, and we have made it very plain, over and over again—I even said this in my statement at the beginning—that we intend to maintain closer co-operation with Europe, not have less co-operation, on security, crime and intelligence matters. We must understand that Europe has a great deal to gain from this, because we are the intelligence superpower in Europe—we have the most powerful intelligence agencies—and therefore on things such as tackling crime and terrorism we are very important to them, as we think they are to us, too.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right in what he says, and this has been our approach. We have had a number of meetings of the Joint Ministerial Committee, two of them chaired by the Prime Minister and three of them chaired by me. We have been to Wales to see the Welsh Government to talk about some of these issues. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State is appearing before the Welsh Parliament—”
“The Welsh Committee—sorry. He is appearing before the Committee on 14 February, I believe. We are taking the interests of Wales extremely seriously. We will operate this negotiation so that no part of the UK loses—that is the aim.”
“This is a negotiation, but if the hon. Lady reads the White Paper, she will see that it sets out that European exports of goods and services to us total £290 billion, whereas ours to them are worth £230 billion. So they clearly have a strong interest—as strong an interest as we do—in tariff-free goods access, because for them goods are a much bigger part of it as well. The disparity is more than £60 billion, so there is every reason to expect that we will succeed in what we are intending to do, which is protect the jobs of her constituents.”
“That is simply not the case. As I just said, we have regular monthly meetings with the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive—when they are in play—and we are taking what they say very seriously. We will not agree with everything they say, as the hon. Gentleman well knows. The Scottish Government’s paper was presented at the last meeting and there were areas of agreement on employment protection and on environmental protection, but disagreement on the concept of a “carve out” on the single market and a discussion about how the devolution would work. That hardly constitutes not paying attention to the Scottish Government.”
“Absolutely, control does not mean slamming the door. As I said, it is in the UK’s interest to keep attracting talent, and if we attract talent, we attract the families—that goes without saying. Earlier, I was asked whether I could promise something that is to be negotiated, but this is something we will decide in this House, for the first time, in a couple of years’ time.”
“Obviously, we need to seek to maintain some sort of standard parity, be it by a measure of equivalence or by something else, depending on the product. The area where the deals outside and the deals with the European Union conflict is on rules of origin. We will have to have a good rules of origin scheme, just as any other free trade area has. For example, the Canadian treaty has specific rules of origin and we will need to do the same. But that is a very small burden by comparison with the sorts of things people are worrying about, if we get the customs agreement we seek.”
“My hon. Friend’s question sort of answers itself, but I hope that it will be once the EU has received the article 50 letter from us—so in April or May. It will receive that letter in March and will respond in April or May.”
“It is to create a customs agreement; it is in order to enable us to develop free trade agreements with that huge portion of the world where there is very fast growth and we have a strong market presence. Some 40% of our trade, or as much as we have with the EU, is with areas where we do not have free trade agreements. So this is a very large area and it is growing, sometimes twice as fast as the EU is. We are taking this approach for the future opportunities. People often talk about the implications of the referendum for young people, but the biggest implication is the prospect of jobs in the future, many of which will come from global markets, not just European ones.”
“I will certainly do the first half; I will certainly redouble my efforts, although they are pretty intense in any case, to ensure that this happens quickly. My hon. Friend is right that we are talking about just a few countries. I suspect their reasoning is the communautaire reasoning of not starting anything before the negotiations start, and I hope this will be rapidly resolved thereafter.”
“I was sitting there calculating whether my right hon. Friend’s question today was longer than his speech yesterday, and I think it was. Yes, I hope Members in the upper House do pay attention. The Bill is a manifestation of the will of the people—nearly 17.5 million people—and I would expect the upper House, which quite properly has its place and its rights, to respect that will.”
“At the core of this Bill lies a very simple question: do we trust the people or not? The democratic mandate is clear: the electorate voted for a Government to give them a referendum. Parliament voted to hold the referendum, the people voted in that referendum, and we are now honouring the result of that referendum, as we said we would.”
“I beg to move, that the Bill be now read a Second time. Given your admonishment, Mr Speaker, and indeed the state of my voice, I give the House warning that I will not take very many interventions. I will take some, but not my normal two dozen. The Bill responds directly to the Supreme Court judgment of 24 January, and seeks to honour the commitment the Government gave to respect the outcome of the referendum held on 23 June 2016. It is not a Bill about whether the UK should leave the European Union or, indeed, about how it should do so; it is simply about Parliament empowering the Government to implement a decision already made—a point of no return already passed. We asked the people of the UK whether they wanted to leave the European Union, and they decided they did.”
“Together, these clear and succinct powers will allow the Prime Minister to begin the process of withdrawal from the European Union, respecting the decision of the Supreme Court. This is just the beginning—the beginning of a process to ensure that the decision made by the people last June is honoured.”
“Not at the moment. This is the most straightforward possible Bill necessary to enact that referendum result and respect the Supreme Court’s judgment. Indeed, the House of Commons has already overwhelmingly passed a motion to support the triggering of article 50 by 31 March. We will respect the will of the people and implement their decision by 31 March. Clause 1(1) simply confers on the Prime Minister the power to notify, under article 50 of the treaty on European Union, the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the European Union. Clause 1(2) is included to make it clear that the power to trigger article 50 may be conferred on the Prime Minister regardless of any restrictions in other legislation, including the European Communities Act 1972.”
“My hon. Friend makes his point in his own inimitable way. As he knows, I always take the view that people’s votes in this House are a matter for their own honour and their own beliefs.”
“That is why article 50 applies to both the European Union and to Euratom.”
“If the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I want to make a little bit of progress, and I will then give way to him. I draw hon. Members’ attention to the explanatory notes to the Bill, which set out the application of the Bill to Euratom. The Bill also gives the Prime Minister the power to start the process to leave Euratom. The Bill makes it clear that in invoking article 50, we will be leaving Euratom, the agency established by treaty to ensure co-operation on nuclear matters, as well as leaving the European Union. This is because, although Euratom was established in a treaty separate from the EU agreements and treaties, it uses the same institutions as the European Union, including the European Court of Justice. The European Union (Amendment) Act 2008 makes it clear that in UK law membership of the European Union includes Euratom.”
“The first thing I would say to my hon. Friend is that there is a two-year timetable, so we are still two years out from this. The Prime Minister has also said very clearly in her industrial strategy and in her speech on Brexit that we intend to support the scientific community and to build as much support for it as we can. When we engage in negotiations after March, we will negotiate with the European Union with the aim of creating a mechanism that will allow the research to go on.”
“That is almost exactly the opposite of the case. Since the right hon. Gentleman picks up on Euratom, let me make the point in rather more elaborate detail. Euratom passes to its constituent countries the regulations, rules and supervision that it inherits, as it were, from the International Atomic Energy Agency, of which we are still a member. When we come to negotiate with the European Union on this matter, if it is not possible to come to a conclusion involving some sort of relationship with Euratom, we will no doubt be able to reach one with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is possibly the most respectable international body in the world. I am afraid he is wrong on that.”
“No. Our aims are clear: we will maintain the closest possible nuclear co-operation with the European Union. That relationship could take a number of different forms, and it will of course be subject to negotiations that will start after we have notified.”
“The hon. Gentleman made his point very well, and I take it absolutely. He is right that a lot of jobs are involved, as are our standing in the scientific community and our international reputation, as well as individual projects, such as the Joint European Torus project and ITER—the international thermonuclear experimental reactor—all of which we will seek to preserve. We will have the most open mind possible. The difficulty we face is of course that decisions are made by unanimity under the Euratom treaty, so we essentially have to win over the entire group. We will set out to do that, and we will do it with the same aims that he has described. Absolutely, yes: I give him my word on that matter.”
“Further, since our proposal is to shift the entire acquis communautaire—the body of EU law—into UK law at the point this country leaves the EU, it will be for Parliament to determine any changes to our domestic legislation in the national interest. But as the Prime Minister said, to disclose all the details as we negotiate is not in the best interests of this country. Indeed, I have said all along that we will lay out as much detail of our strategy as possible, subject to the caveat that it does not damage our negotiating position. This approach has been endorsed by the House a number of times.”