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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“My hon. Friend makes a very important point. When the Prime Minister is at the European Council tonight and tomorrow, she will reiterate what we have said many times already: we want an outcome that is successful for both the United Kingdom and the European Union. As my hon. Friend suggests, if the UK and the EU do not achieve an open, free and barrier-free trading relationship, it will be harmful to many European countries and harmful to European financial stability, and no one wants that.”
“As I said earlier, these matters are assessed very carefully, but perhaps the hon. Lady should look at various other countries around the European Union, although they are all smaller than us, so they are not really good models. There is Turkey, which is inside the customs union and outside the single market; there is Norway, which is inside the single market and outside the customs union—actually it manages to trade with Sweden very easily—and there is Switzerland, which is outside both the customs union and the single market. What we are looking for is the best balance to achieve the best outcome.”
“It is not for this Minister, at any rate, to comment on what is the appropriate or right level of the pound. However, as my hon. Friend says, this has its disadvantages in terms of the effect on inflation, but some serious advantages in terms of our trading capability, and those are much bigger even than the tariffs that people talk about.”
“What I can undertake to do is to ensure that we secure the freest and most open possible trading arrangement with Europe. That is what matters, not titles such as “single market”, “hard Brexit” or “soft Brexit”—all those amazing terms that people come up with. We want the maximum possible access, which will encourage job growth, wealth growth and revenue growth in this country.”
“My hon. Friend makes a good point. Let me reiterate what I said earlier. Our aim is to come up with an outcome that is good for the United Kingdom and good for the European Union, and that is a free trade area with us.”
“A large component of the people who voted to leave the EU could be characterised as the British industrial working class. It is no part of my brief to undermine their rights—full stop. As a Government, we have been clear that we will do nothing to undermine workers’ rights. All law in this area at the time of exit will be brought under UK law as part of the great repeal Bill, ensuring continuity.”
“The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. That is why I said last week when we were talking about the great repeal Bill that we will have extensive discussions with all the devolved Administrations to ensure that each appropriate piece of law goes to the right place.”
“The Prime Minister has made it clear that she will trigger article 50 by the end of March 2017. It is in everyone’s interests that we take time to establish a UK approach and clear objectives for negotiations. Equally the Prime Minister has been clear that there will be no unnecessary delay. We have also been clear that we will trigger when the time is right for Britain and we will certainly, where possible, give people and businesses in Britain and other European countries the time to consider for themselves what the outcome will amount to. That is what we are doing.”
“That is exactly right: it is what the Prime Minister said and it is what we intend—and I have to say that I doubt it is what the Opposition intend.”
“My hon. Friend is right: we should respect the will of the British people. I have not had a chance to look at the Lords report yet, but I will comment on it when I do.”
“We will reap the opportunities exit provides all over the world and deliver an orderly and smooth transition, but I have been clear, as has the Prime Minister, that we will not be providing a running commentary on the negotiations; that would not be in our interests. Parliament will however be fully and properly engaged, as will the devolved Administrations. We want to build a national consensus around our position and discuss our options with a range of stakeholders. Last week, I committed to a series of debates so that the House can air its views and we look forward to engaging with the new Select Committee. I congratulate again the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) on his election as Chair of that Committee.”
“Last week I updated the House on our progress towards leaving the EU. I have been clear that the Government’s overarching aims are bringing back control of our laws to Parliament, bringing back control of decisions over immigration to the UK, maintaining the strong security co-operation we have with the EU, and establishing the freest possible market in goods and services with the EU and the rest of the world. The great repeal Bill will end the primacy of EU law. It will minimise uncertainty and return sovereignty to the institutions of the United Kingdom, because that is what the referendum was all about—taking control. We will work to ensure the UK’s exit from the EU serves the interests of the whole country, from citizens to businesses.”
“As the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) has made clear already, we want to be able to guarantee the rights of all those European migrants in the UK. Many of them are already in the position of having indefinite leave to remain, or will have by the time we leave in two and a half years’ time or thereabouts, so we are talking about a small fraction of those people, but nevertheless we take this incredibly seriously and we will seek to get the agreement with the other European countries that we will uphold their rights and British citizens’ rights abroad as soon as possible.”
“The hon. Lady had a great deal of trouble keeping a straight face while she was asking that question. That is because she knows it is one that I am not going to answer.”
“When entering into a game, no-one starts by revealing his entire strategy to his counterpart from the outset: this is also the case for the EU.” The Opposition are trying to put us in a disadvantaged position with the European Union, and that is not in the national interest.”
“I have no trouble keeping a straight face when dealing with the Opposition. I am afraid that, from time to time, they do things that are seriously not in the country’s interests. Let me quote a rather more authoritative source than the Financial Times . The European Commission has guidelines on how it handles negotiations and what it puts in the public domain beforehand. It states: “The negotiations and their texts are not themselves public. This is entirely normal for trade negotiations, not just those involving the EU. There are several reasons for this. A certain level of confidentiality is necessary to protect EU interests and to keep chances for a satisfactory outcome high.”
“Most EU funds will be guaranteed post-departure by the Treasury, as we said in August. After that, the decision will be one for the British people, the British Parliament, the British Government and the relevant Department. I am sure that they will take on board what the hon. Lady has said.”
“This is not about the allocation of staff. If I put one staff member in every region, only one will be left in Whitehall. The simple truth is that we have been around from Belfast to Blackburn to the port of Tilbury and many other places in the UK and will continue to do so throughout the process, both up until the point at which we trigger article 50 and thereafter.”
“I reiterate that my Department’s task is to bring decisions back to the United Kingdom so that the British Government and the British Parliament can make them in the interests of the United Kingdom. My right hon. Friend can be absolutely sure that those interests will not be interpreted into somehow denying staff to the NHS—just the reverse.”
“As I have said several times in debates that the hon. Gentleman has attended, I will make as much information public as possible without prejudicing our negotiating position. That is what he is witnessing.”
“I will indeed. We have been studying in some detail the effect on integrated manufacturing operations across borders to ensure that they are not jeopardised, whatever the outcome.”
“The Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) was with sector representatives just a day or two ago and Nissan went to see the Prime Minister just this week.”
“I have to say that it was this Minister who gave the commitment that we would not undermine or in any way reduce the protection available to British workers’ employment rights in all the nations of the United Kingdom. Tomorrow, I am meeting Mike Russell, the Scottish National party’s representative, in Glasgow to discuss this sort of thing.”
“More important than me, the Prime Minister had a meeting with Nissan only this week, and the communiqué that came out after it was extremely positive on both sides.”
“On a point of information, that is not correct. I have already said that it is not correct. In talking to the Lords Committee in September, I said that the House would have at least the information available to the European Parliament. What the hon. and learned Gentleman says is just not the case.”
“I was just about to say that the hon. and learned Gentleman will remember from Monday that I reiterated the support for his standing as a lawyer.”
“The House should know that this morning I received a letter, signed by the shadow Secretary of State and his predecessor, which was extremely flattering about my history of standing up for the rights of Parliament and so on. It went on to pose 170 questions about our negotiating strategy. To give the House an idea of how much of a stunt that is, it is one question a day between now until the triggering of article 50. Worse still, some of the questions in that long list are requests pre-emptively to concede elements of our negotiating strategy.”
“I beg to move amendment (b), at end add ‘; and believes that the process should be undertaken in such a way that respects the decision of the people of the UK when they voted to leave the EU on 23 June and does not undermine the negotiating position of the Government as negotiations are entered into which will take place after Article 50 has been triggered.’. I am glad to hear that the Labour spokesman accepts that we must respect the decision of the people. That is important progress. Of course, it comes from somewhere, but where is not at all clear. I will come back to that in less than a minute. He went on to say that he did not want to see point scoring, and I rather agree: this issue is too important for point scoring.”
“My hon. Friend is exactly right. That is the premise on which we are advancing. That is not to say— [ Interruption. ] If the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) waits a moment, I will give way. We will have proper scrutiny, and I will deal with that in a minute. We will not allow anyone to veto the decision of the British people—that is the point.”
“I will go through the stages of assent later—the right hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point. I am determined— [ Interruption. ] I will give way once more, but then I must make progress.”
“For decades, the primacy of the UK Parliament has been superseded by decisions made within EU institutions, but now, following the clear instruction of the voters in the referendum on 23 June, we can finally change that and put Parliament unequivocally in charge. That is exactly why we announced plans for a great repeal Bill last week; it is a clear commitment to end the primacy of EU law. It will return sovereignty to the institutions of the United Kingdom, because that is what the referendum result was all about: taking control. Naturally, Parliament will oversee the passage of the Bill, which will allow us to ensure that our statute book is fit for purpose on the day we leave the EU. It will then be for Parliament alone to determine what changes to the law best suit the national interest.”
“I therefore broadly welcome the motion, but with important caveats, and that is why the Government’s amendment is necessary. The first key point is that we must ensure that the decision that the people made on 23 June is fully respected. We also need to be explicit that, while we welcome parliamentary scrutiny, it must not be used as a vehicle to undermine the Government’s negotiating position or thwart the process of exit—both are important. The negotiation will be complex and difficult, and we should do nothing to jeopardise it. As I said in my statement on Monday—the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) quoted me several times—the sovereignty of Parliament and its restoration is at the very heart of why the UK is withdrawing from the European Union.”
“No, I do not think so. The right hon. Gentleman asks a serious question. Part of the reasoning is that the Prime Minister feels, quite reasonably, that the people want the process to be under way. Indeed, if one believes opinion polls, that is what is going on. However, we do not want to do it immediately, unlike the leader of the Labour party, who said on 24 June that we should trigger it immediately—of course, now he has changed his mind. What we are doing is putting together our negotiating strategy, which requires an enormous amount of work—I will come back to that point—and some of it will become public as we go along. I am determined, as would be expected, that Parliament will be fully and properly engaged in the discussion on how we make a success of Brexit.”
“I will come back to some of that later. I will not allow any party to have a veto on the decision to leave the European Union. That is the first key decision.”
“First, we want to build a national consensus around our position. I have already promised more than once to listen to all sides of the debate and ensure that we fight in our negotiation for the best deal for the country. We cannot do that in an air of secrecy, but I will come back to that later. Secondly, we will put the national interest first and listen carefully to the devolved Administrations. Thirdly, wherever possible—it is not always possible—we should minimise uncertainty. That is what the great repeal Bill is about: bringing existing EU law into domestic law upon exit day, and empowering Parliament to make the changes necessary to reflect our new relationship. Finally, by the end of this process, when we have left the European Union, we will have put the sovereignty and supremacy of this Parliament beyond doubt.”
“I am hardly running scared of parliamentary scrutiny. As has already been noted, I have made two statements to the House and appeared twice before Select Committees, and today there is this outing, and all within two and a half weeks of the parliamentary Session. Let me return to a comment from the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras. Let us be clear that we agree that leaving the European Union is a momentous decision. With such a huge turnout—72%, with over 33 million people having their say—there is an overwhelming mandate to put the will of the British people into practice. I have spoken at length about our plan to make a success of Brexit. As I set out in my statement on 5 September—it, too, was quoted by the hon. and learned Gentleman—our plan has four aims.”
“The overarching aims are: bringing back control of our laws to Parliament; bringing back control of decisions over immigration to the UK; maintaining the strong security co-operation we have with the EU; and establishing the freest possible market in goods and services with the EU and the rest of the world. I cannot see how those are not very clear overarching strategic objectives.”
“He is right. Nobody involved in this exercise from the other side of the argument has ever pointed out quite how odd it is that fellow democracies—indeed, allies—threaten to punish each other for the exercise of democratic rights. I want to take up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), because there is undoubtedly a big task ahead of us and people naturally want to understand where we are headed. We have been pretty clear on the overarching aims—not the detailed aims, because we are not yet at the point at which that is possible.”
“I take my hon. Friend’s point. The issue that we must bear in mind, however, is that we can give clarity as we go along in the negotiating strategy—in grand terms but not in detailed terms—but what we cannot do is tell anybody, businesses or others, where we will arrive at the final stage, because it is a negotiation. We have to face the fact that it is a negotiation and, therefore, it is not entirely under the control of one country.”
“The answer is no. By the way, I think that a half U-turn is a right turn. One of the reasons I gave way to the hon. Gentleman was to say that one of the things that we have sought to clarify early on, and that does not have an associated cost in negotiating terms, is the treatment of employment rights for workers. We made that very clear very early, just as I tried to do with the status of EU migrants here. We can do those things earlier, but we cannot, as he well knows—he has negotiated any number of deals in his time—give away all our negotiating strategy early.”
“Not at the moment. Let me just finish this section of my speech before giving way to one of my colleagues. We have these fairly obvious, overarching strategic aims. They are very clear; they are not remotely doubtful. It must be that Labour does not want to recognise that because it finds some of those aims uncomfortable. I am not entirely sure what Labour’s policy is on European immigration. It is completely unspecified.”
“We are focusing on dealing with those concerns, establishing what opportunities there are—there are significant opportunities, too—and then devising a negotiating strategy that serves the interests of the whole country: all of them, not one at a time.”
“The hon. and learned Gentleman can wait until the later part of my speech, when I will give him the exact answer. He will have to wait for that. The reason this has not been promised before the end of March is that it takes time, as the hon. and learned Gentleman will understand. We are meeting organisations from across the country, from the creative industries, telecoms, financial services, agriculture and energy, including the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, Universities UK and the TUC. All those organisations are putting their concerns to us. Some of those are incredibly serious concerns, which we have to deal with.”
“I am afraid that in the immediate aftermath of the vote to leave there was an extraordinary outpouring almost of grief—a “blame Brexit” festival, if you like. It ranged from the Italian Finance Minister blaming us for the state of his bond markets to, more significantly, banks in this country saying that they were laying people off because of Brexit, which, of course, turned out to be entirely untrue. I would have sympathy with employees made nervous by employers who are guessing the worst outcome.”
“I started by saying that I was in favour of parliamentary scrutiny; I will widen that out later. Part of the reason for that—not the only reason, by any means—is a recognition of people’s concerns about their job futures. There is no doubt about that. That is why we said in terms that we want a free trade arrangement that is at least as good as what we have now, with both the European Union and outside.”
“Let me deal with the first issue that the right hon. Lady raised: the treatment of current EU migrants. I have said in terms—I was quoted by the shadow Secretary of State—that we seek to give them guarantees as good as they have now. The only condition is that we get the same guarantees for British citizens. Far from making people bargaining chips, treating them as a group, collectively, avoids making them bargaining chips. On other aspects of immigration policy, my task is to bring control back to the UK, not to decide what eventual immigration policy will be. It must be decidable here, in this House, by the British Government, subject to parliamentary oversight and control.”
“The simple truth is that we are appearing regularly in front of the House and seeking to give as much as we can.”
“I will make some progress and give way again in a moment. I return to the Opposition’s motion. They say that there should be “a full and transparent debate on the Government’s plan for leaving the EU”. I agree. At the same time, I am sure that we can all agree that nothing should be done to compromise the national interest in the negotiation to come; I think the shadow Secretary of State said that in his opening speech. I could list the 100 questions that we have answered, the oral statements, the appearances before Select Committees; the House knows all that. As a Department, we are not being backward in appearing in front of the House. The House may not be overwhelmed with the detail of the answers yet—that is hardly surprising: we are only a few weeks into the process and six months away from the end of it.”
“The legislation is judiciable and subject to amendment in this House. It will be entirely subject to the will of the House. Any Government seeking to alter it will have to get the permission of the House through a vote in the House. That is very plain. It will also be under the jurisdiction of the British courts; that is the other aspect that the hon. Lady asked about.”
“I am afraid that that intervention is rather a demonstration of one of the problems that we have with the language on this issue. People have been talking about “hard Brexit” and “soft Brexit”, which mean very little. Attempts have been made to pigeonhole what could be any one of a whole range of outcomes in market terms. We have not yet started a negotiation with the European Union and there is a whole spectrum—from free trade area, to customs union, to the single market arrangement. The shadow Secretary of State was laying out some of those possibilities. We are not going to go for a Norwegian, Turkish or Swiss option—we are going for a British option, which will be tailored to our interests and better for our interests than any other option.”