Preparations for Leaving the EU

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Secretary of State for Transport has ensured that across the United Kingdom, at service stations and other points on our motorway system where hauliers are likely to pause or pass, we are in a position to provide them not just with the information that they need to know whether they are compliant with EU rules, but with the opportunity—if they need to—to correct the paperwork that they have, or if they are not compliant, to turn back, because we want to do everything possible to ensure that non-compliant vehicles get nowhere near Kent for reasons of maintaining the flow at the border and safeguarding the interests of my right hon. Friend’s citizens and other Kent residents.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

The business and local authority organisation representing Devon and Cornwall—the Heart of the South West local enterprise partnership—wrote to the right hon. Gentleman last week telling him that with the wholly inadequate mitigation measures that are already in place, a no-deal Brexit would be as bad for our region as foot and mouth, except that it will go on for a lot longer, will it not? Is the organisation wrong?

[Michael Gove]

Yes, I think it is, but it is also important that if we put to one side the rhetoric that organisations often use to try to secure attention and look in a granular way—[Interruption.]