Tag: Speeches

Andrew Adonis – 2020 Speech on the Future Relationship with the EU Bill

The speech made by Andrew Adonis in the House of Lords on 30 December 2020.

I am sure it is much better to say exactly what we think about public affairs and this is certainly not a time when it is worth anyone’s while to court political popularity. I will therefore begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget, but which must be stated, that

“we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat”.—[Official Report, Commons, 5/10/1938; col. 360.]

Those were Winston Churchill’s words in the House of Commons on the Munich agreement 82 years ago. Alas, they apply word for word to the Brexit agreement we are being asked to rubber-stamp today.

January 1, 2021
Ed Davey – 2020 Speech on the Future Relationship with the EU Bill

The speech made by Ed Davey, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats, in the House of Commons on 30 December 2020.

Our country is gripped by two crises: Britain’s hospitals are overwhelmed and Britain’s economy is in the worst recession for 300 years. A responsible Government, faced with those crises for people’s health and jobs, would not pass this bad deal, for it will make British people poorer and British people less safe.

This is not really a trade deal at all; it is a loss of trade deal. It is the first trade deal in history to put up barriers to trade. Is that really the Government’s answer to British businesses fearing for their futures and British workers fearing for their jobs? We were told that leaving the EU would cut red tape, but the deal represents the biggest increase in red tape in British history, with 23 new committees to oversee this new trade bureaucracy, 50,000 new customs officials and 400 million new forms. Some analysts estimate the cost of this new red-tape burden for British business at over £20 billion every year. This is not the frictionless trade that the Prime Minister promised.

Jonathan Edwards

I fully agree with the points that the right hon. Member is making. Is he concerned at reports that the lack of equivalence for sanitary and phytosanitary measures means that Welsh farmers will face more red tape exporting to the EU than New Zealand farmers?

Ed Davey

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman; he is absolutely right. The more businesses see this, the more they will be very disappointed. These reels of red tape will put more jobs at risk at a time when so many are already being lost to covid, and all these new trade barriers will raise prices in the shops at a time when so many families are already struggling to make ends meet. From the failure to agree a good deal for Britain’s services sector—80% of our economy—to the failure to agree a stable deal that investors will trust, this is a lousy deal for Britain’s economic future.

The Conservatives can no longer claim to be the party of business, and with this deal they can no longer claim to be the party of law and order, for our police will no longer have real-time, immediate access to critical European crime-fighting databases such as Schengen II. Such sources of key information about criminals and crimes are used every single day by our police; in one year alone, they are used over 600 million times, often in the heat of an investigation. Thanks to the Prime Minister’s deal, British police will lose that privileged access and criminals will escape.

There are so many things wrong with this deal, from its failings on the environment to the broken promises for our young people on Erasmus, yet the irony is that, for a deal that is supposed to restore parliamentary sovereignty, our Parliament has been given only hours to scrutinise it while the European Parliament has days. And business has just days to adjust to this deal. The Liberal Democrats called on the Prime Minister to negotiate a grace period to help businesses adjust, forgetting, of course, that this Government no longer care about business.

The Government leave us no choice but to vote against this deal today. Perhaps that will not surprise too many people—the Liberal Democrats are, after all, a proud pro-European party who fought hard against Brexit—but we have genuinely looked at this post-Brexit trade deal to assess whether it is a good basis for the future relationship between the UK and the EU, and it is not. To those who argue that a vote against this deal is a vote for no deal, I say this: the Liberal Democrats led the charge against no deal when this Prime Minister was selling the virtues of no deal.

Today, the question is simple: is this a good deal for the British people? It is a deal that costs jobs, increases red tape, hits our service-based economy, undermines our police and damages our young people’s future. It is a bad deal, and the Liberal Democrats will vote against it.

December 31, 2020
Liam Fox – 2020 Speech on the Future Relationship with the EU Bill

The speech made by Liam Fox, the Conservative MP for North Somerset, in the House of Commons on 30 December 2020.

Those of us who voted and campaigned to leave the European Union did so for a number of reasons. I was always a constitutional leaver. For me, the test of this Bill is: does it return the sovereignty that we sought? The answer is yes. Why? Because there is no subjugation to EU law or EU jurisprudence, no direct effect and no direct application. Retention of any of those would have been incompatible with a sovereign state. In fact, from our accession to the European Community through various EU treaties, all those elements were incompatible with the concept that those who live under the law should be able to determine those who make the law. That is what we have regained in this process.

The second test for me is: does this allow us to have a genuinely independent trade policy? Let us remember that we were told that it would take more than 10 years to reach a free trade agreement with the European Union and that it would be impossible to roll over all the EU agreements that we had. I stood at the Dispatch Box and listened to the Opposition incessantly telling us that. I congratulate Ministers and officials under Crawford Falconer at the Department for International Trade for all they have achieved, and I especially congratulate David Frost on landing one of the world’s biggest, if not the biggest, trade agreements in 11 months—a world record—which, again, we were told was not possible.

When we voted to leave the European Union, we also voted to leave the single market, although for some of us the single market is also the single anti-market, with many of the restrictions and protectionisms that it encompasses. If we want to access the single market, there has to be a price to be paid. If we want to diverge from the rules of the single market, there has to be a price to be paid. Does this agreement provide effective mechanisms for us to do those things? My answer, again, is yes.

Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the mechanisms that this treaty has found are every bit as good as the mechanisms in the Canada treaty, for example, and all other treaties that reflect these tensions in free trade agreements?

Dr Fox

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and not only are they effective mechanisms, but they keep us in line with the best international practice that exists, which of course enables us to move forward with greater predictability. On that point, there are a number of specific elements to welcome. The first is the acceptance of the concept—

Jonathan Edwards

Will the right hon. Member give way?

Dr Fox

I will not, I am afraid.

The first element is the concept of non-regression as a means of ensuring minimum standards. We accept that the maintenance of those high standards has fixed costs in international commerce, which is why we will always need to compete at the high end of the quality market globally in goods and services. As the Prime Minister rightly pointed out, we cannot ever become a bargain basement economy because the fixed costs we have are simply too high and, quite rightly, the British people would not allow us to abandon the standards we have. It means that we will have to move forward with the natural innovation and creativity of the British people expanding our export culture, because the bottom line is that without more exports and without more actual trade, any trade agreement is simply a piece of paper. It is upon the natural innovation of the British people that our prosperity will be built in the future.

The second element, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) alluded, is the fact that the concept in dispute resolution of international arbitration is done without the European Court of Justice, which brings us in line with international trends and practices. That takes us to the third element: the mechanism of determining divergence. If there is no ability to determine to diverge, we are not sovereign. If there were not a price to be paid for divergence, the EU would never have reached the agreement with us. What would have been unacceptable is the concept of dynamic alignment—automatically taking EU rules over which we had no control into our law—but what is acceptable is penalties for divergence, which are clearly set out. They are proportionate, and there is a requirement to show harm, rather than their simply being put into law. The most important element of all in this is that it is we who will weigh up the costs and benefits of any potential disalignment. It is our choice—that is one of the key elements that we have in the future.

Today opens up a new chapter in our politics. It is the choice of maintaining and strengthening an independent United Kingdom; or of the new ranks of the rejoiners, who would have us thrust back into European accession politics all over again, consuming all our political time and energy, which is a future that I believe the British public will reject. There are things that we still have to sort out—the future of Gibraltar is one of the important ones, as is seeing further details on services, including financial services—but this is a historic day in our democracy. We have delivered on the referendum and our election promises. If, for the Opposition, those are not reasons to be cheerful, they are at least reasons of which we should all be proud.

December 31, 2020
Kevin Brennan – 2020 Speech on the Future Relationship with the EU Bill

The speech made by Kevin Brennan, the Labour MP for Cardiff West, in the House of Commons on 30 December 2020.

I understand completely the exasperation of people that, four and a half years after the Brexit referendum, we are still debating this subject, and I understand the desire to move on. I also accept the proposition that a thin deal is better than no deal, but this is not only a thin deal; it is a bad deal. A far better deal could and should have been negotiated by the Government and still could be.

In the nearly 20 years that I have spent in this House—15 of them on the Front Bench—there have been many occasions when I have voted for a proposition with reservations; that is the nature of parliamentary and party politics. But there are occasions when that proposition is too damaging to support. I accept that there is a valid argument at this stage, as laid out by my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition, to move on and for the Opposition to build on this bad deal. I also accept that in politics, many decisions—perhaps most—are not between what is right and what is clearly identifiable as wrong but are on a continuum between what is unpalatable and what is unacceptable. Clearly, no deal is unacceptable. This bad deal is certainly unpalatable and, in places, unacceptable because of the ideological approach taken to negotiations by this awful right-wing shambles of a Tory Government who are determined to set Britain on a path that will damage it culturally and economically.

While I understand the desire to move on, I simply do not understand why it is necessary for those who believe that this is a bad deal to vote for it and dip their fingertips in the indelible ink of this abject failure of national ambition. The deadline we are up against today is an entirely artificial one, sustained only so that the Prime Minister can say that he has met his own political timetable. The truth is that the transition period could have been extended or the deal could have been introduced on a provisional basis to allow the House to thoroughly scrutinise it line by line, rather than follow the “take it or leave it by lunchtime” timetable that the Government have artificially manufactured today.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) was right to talk about the red tape for manufacturing in this deal, checks for farmers, burdensome regulation on businesses and the fact that the consequences of the deal will be economically damaging. In addition, the Government have chosen to end the Erasmus educational programme for young people, there is no proper recognition of professional qualifications and they will remove work permit-free access across the EU for touring musicians, who have already been unable to work for the last year due to covid. In the last few days, that issue alone has triggered a petition to Parliament of more than 200,000 signatures. Less than a year ago, the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams), who was at the time the Minister for Sport, Media and Creative Industries, said in Westminster Hall:

“It is essential that free movement is protected for artists post 2020.”—[Official Report, 21 January 2020; Vol. 670, c. 56WH.]

That is just one example of the failure of the Government to deliver even on their own woefully inadequate promises in relation to this deal. This is a thin deal. It is a failure, even on the Government’s own terms. In short, it is a bad deal, and I will not be voting for it.

December 31, 2020
Cheryl Gillan – 2020 Speech on the Future Relationship with the EU Bill

The speech made by Cheryl Gillan, the Conservative MP for Chesham and Amersham, in the House of Commons on 30 December 2020.

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn). I do not always agree with him, but I recognise the detailed and sterling work he has done on the Brexit Select Committee and am glad that he is voting for the Bill today.

I also welcome the fantastic news on the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which along with the Bill gives us a double reason for celebration. I add my congratulations and plaudits to the Prime Minister and all our negotiators on their steadfastness in bringing home this deal.

Make no mistake, it took guts and determination both to leave the EU and, finally, to deliver this result. It may not be perfect. I, too, for example, share the reservations expressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) about the position of our services industry, which needs urgent resolution on, for example, what the equivalence rules will look like.

The deal has been hard won and delivers zero tariffs and zero quotas, which brings a huge sigh of relief to many businesses and industries across the country. At the same time, it allows the UK once again to control its destiny through its own elected representatives and its own courts—the independence and control over our affairs that I and many others voted for in the referendum.

This is not a precipitative end to our relationship, but the controlled departure that we were all hoping for. Our participation in programmes such as Horizon Europe and EU Space Surveillance and Tracking indicates our recognition that there are things we can do better together across Europe, but now without having to be subject to a regime that we could not change or, at the very least, even influence.

There will be many other things that we can do better, such as the Turing scheme, which is going to offer 35,000 UK students worldwide opportunities and will replace Erasmus. When we pass this legislation today, we will be in a golden position to create a great future for the United Kingdom—a future that the people of Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England will grasp with both hands. The trade deals and continuity agreements that we have already signed with 62 countries are testament to that, and we must make a great deal of fuss about the work that has gone into those signings, which will mean so much for our country in the future.

To those who continue to wage a war of attrition against this reborn independence and look backwards towards membership of the EU, I hope they, too, will now move on and develop the guts and determination of our Prime Minister to back our own Union and contribute positively to its future success. I believe that the UK’s future is bright, working alongside Europe, but finally, after today, not subjugated by it.

It is with great pleasure that I support this Bill.

December 31, 2020
Michael Fallon – 2017 Comments on Diversity in the Armed Forces

The comments made by Michael Fallon, the then Secretary of State for Defence, on 26 October 2017.

We are working hard to ensure the Armed Forces, like our cadets, better represent the society they serve but there is still much more to do. We want more sailors, soldiers and airmen to come from minority and ethnic communities. More diverse armed forces are a stronger armed forces; that has to start amongst the junior ranks and work all the way up to chief of the defence staff.

December 31, 2020
Michael Fallon – 2017 Comments on A&P Tyne

The comments made by Michael Fallon, the then Secretary of State for Defence, on 30 October 2017.

It is very encouraging to witness the renaissance of shipbuilding around the UK first hand. Having helped build our new aircraft carriers and the Astute Class submarines, A&P Tyne have the skills and expertise to bid for our brand new class of frigates.

The whole industry is clearly excited about the opportunity to build cutting-edge ships for our growing Royal Navy, which will protect our nation and interests across the world.

December 31, 2020
Michael Fallon – 2017 Comments on Flexible Working in the Military

The comments made by Michael Fallon, the then Secretary of State for Defence, on 30 October 2017.

Keeping Britain safe means investing in our personnel as well as in new equipment. More flexible working is essential to a modern military, allowing us to recruit the best talent and retain those already serving, while always being ready to deploy as commanders require.

The military must offer conditions of service that keep up with those available in other lines of work. This change will significantly make it easier for women with children.

December 31, 2020
Michael Fallon – 2017 Comments on British Soldiers in Estonia

The comments made by Michael Fallon, the then Secretary of State for Defence, on 30 October 2017.

Nobody should be in any doubt of our unwavering commitment to the security of Europe through NATO in the face of Russian belligerence.

In the face of intensifying threats, the UK has stepped up across Europe, with soldiers, tanks and Typhoons deployed from Estonia to Romania.

Our enhanced Forward Presence is a strategic tripwire that we will maintain on an enduring footing.

December 31, 2020
Hilary Benn – 2020 Speech on the Future Relationship with the EU Bill

The speech made by Hilary Benn, the Labour MP for Leeds Central, in the House of Commons on 30 December 2020.

May I draw attention to the fourth report of the Brexit Select Committee, on the agreement, which was published this morning? The Committee’s wonderful staff worked really hard over Christmas, but we have not had the opportunity, in three days, to produce a fuller report, and I did write to the Leader of the House about giving the Committee a bit more time to complete the task that was given to us just under a year ago.

I will be voting for this Bill to implement the agreement today, because, quite simply, the alternative is no deal. I recognise that others in the House will abstain or vote against, but if we were in the position where every one of their votes were required in order to get this Bill, and therefore this agreement, through, I cannot believe that any of those colleagues would actually choose no deal, with all the damaging economic consequences it would bring, over a deal. That is why, in the end, the Prime Minister realised that he had no alternative but to get an agreement. This is not a vote about whether we support Brexit—I do not, but it has happened. This is a vote about making a bit better of a bad job.

There are aspects of the agreement that will be welcomed: the absence of tariffs, which has been referred to; the agreement on healthcare; the level playing provisions, which seem pretty reasonable to me; and our having access to some of the information that we require for our security. But we must also be honest about what is missing from this agreement and what that will mean. It does not deliver frictionless trade. It will impose checks, costs and red tape on British businesses that export to Europe. Frankly, I was astonished to hear the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster on the radio the other morning apparently praising red tape as a benefit because it will make British businesses get “match fit” to trade. That is certainly a novel economic theory and it does not reflect the Conservative party as we previously understood it. The agreement offers no certainty yet on data transfer or financial services, which are so important to our economy. We did not get what was sought on conformity assessments, rules of origin, mutual recognition of qualifications, or reduced sanitary and phytosanitary checks. There is, as of this moment, no agreement yet on Gibraltar.

Why has this happened? It has happened because from the start the Government were faced with having to choose between sovereignty, on the one hand, and the economic interests of the country, on the other, and however hard they tried to pretend that they could have the best of both, that was never possible—a trade-off would always have to be made. We see that in the agreement before us, which is long and complex, rather like Brexit itself, and the full implications of both have yet to be revealed.

Today this Bill will pass, and tomorrow the process of leaving the EU will be complete, but the day after we will need to look forward, because a new question will confront us as a nation: what kind of relationship do we now wish to have with our biggest, nearest and most important trading partners and friends? The other reason why I will be voting for this Bill today is that, for all it has failed to secure, it at least provides a foundation on which, in the years ahead, we can build what I hope will be a strong economic and political relationship with our European friends. I hope, as we move beyond leave and remain, we will now be able, as a country, to come together to do exactly that.

December 30, 2020