EU Council

Debate between Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton and David Mowat

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I would argue that we are a parliamentary democracy, so the new Prime Minister and the Cabinet should draw up their negotiating mandate based on the work that is going to be done over the next few weeks and months to set out all the alternatives, and then they will have to bring it here, explain it and defend it in this House. That seems to me the right way forward.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

The formal negotiation will start when article 50 is triggered, but does the Prime Minister agree that our first piece of negotiating leverage is when we decide to trigger article 50, and that there is no reason—legal or moral—for us to do that until we are ready and we have sight, month by month, of what will happen in the 24 months after it has been triggered?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right that when to trigger article 50 is a British decision. It is important to recognise that our European partners have concerns, too. The economic problems that we are currently suffering and may have more of are also affecting them. The Dutch Prime Minister said to me last night that he thought that his growth rate would be materially affected by the position in Britain and the uncertainty. Given that negotiations are, yes, hard work and hard graft, but they also rely on a certain amount of goodwill, we do not want to put too much of that goodwill at risk by how we proceed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton and David Mowat

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman has to look at the facts, rather than talking down the people who are working so hard to teach children in our schools. The facts are these: our teachers are better qualified than ever, with a record 96.6% of teachers in state-funded schools now having a degree or higher qualification. Those are the facts. On those going into teaching, Teach First is the most popular destination for Oxbridge graduates—something that never happened under a Labour Government. If you want to encourage people to go into teaching, you have to know that you have a good school system with more academies, more free schools and higher qualifications, and make sure that we have rigour and discipline in our classrooms, all of which has improved. All of that is possible only if you have a strong and growing economy to fund the schools that our children need.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

Q3. Fiddlers Ferry in my constituency is one of several UK power stations announcing closure this year. However, Germany and Holland, both of whose carbon emissions are higher than ours, are building brand new mega-coal power stations from which we will be importing coal. It is hard for me to explain the logic of this to my constituents. Could the Prime Minister review the pace of our closure programme, particularly in the context of next year’s energy crunch?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend raises a very important question and he is right to say that there is big change in this industry. We want to see an increase in gas capacity and in renewables capacity, and of course the restarting of our nuclear programme, which I hope to be discussing with the French President this week. My hon. Friend is also right to say that security of supply must be our No. 1 priority, and that is why we have announced that we are going to bring forward the capacity market to provide an extra boost to existing stations, and this could indeed help Fiddlers Ferry itself. I would say to him and to everyone across the House that all these decisions we take about energy have consequences for people’s bills. He mentioned Germany, but German electricity prices are 40% higher than those of the UK; the level of subsidy makes up about 30% of German bills. Ours is less than half that level, and I think we have to think through these decisions and their consequences for energy consumers.

Syria

Debate between Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton and David Mowat

Thursday 26th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

First of all, the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say how important it is to have those ground forces. I pay tribute to what the peshmerga have been able to achieve with American, British and German support. It is also important to recognise what the Iraqi security forces have achieved and how we have rolled back a large extent of the so-called caliphate in Iraq. Syrian moderate forces will suffer further attrition unless we support them. There are 70,000 now. There will be more if we demonstrate our support for them financially, as we do already, and with equipment, as we do already; and, frankly, if we take the fight to ISIL, who are an enormous threat to them. This is partly within our powers. In terms of the people who lead these organisations, whether it is the Kurdish regional authority or the Free Syrian Army, they are all people we are in contact with and are working with. If the argument is being made that there are not enough of them, yes, I agree. But I do not think that that is an argument for inaction; it is an argument helping them and building them up.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

The only apparent source of wealth for ISIL comes from onshore oil fields that do not require precision bombing to take out, yet we have made very little progress on this in the past year. Will the Prime Minister say why we have not attacked this source of wealth, and whether, going forward, we will be able to?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The simple answer to his question is that a lot of these fields are in Syria. When we ask what more we can do to cut off sources of funds to ISIL, we would be enormously helped if we could take the action in Syria that I am proposing.