European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Boris Johnson and Sammy Wilson

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I can confirm that we will be doing that, but it is probably best done in the course of the Bill, and we should get on with the debate as fast as possible.

Let me come to our compatriots in Northern Ireland. This Bill upholds in full the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, as Lord Trimble has attested, and our unwavering commitment to Northern Ireland’s place in the Union.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Prime Minister, the central plank of the mechanisms for ensuring that both communities are protected in the Belfast agreement— I state this from the agreement—is

“to ensure that all sections of the community can participate and work together…and that all sections…are protected”

and

“arrangements to ensure key decisions are taken on a cross-community basis”.

How does that square with the terms of this agreement under which, as the Prime Minister has stated in this House, decisions will be made on a majority basis?

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I thank him and his party for the work they have done to help us to change this deal very, very much for the better, and he played an instrumental role in that.

On the point that the right hon. Gentleman raises, he knows that this is a reserved issue, and I simply return to my point: the salient feature of these arrangements is that they evaporate. They disintegrate. They vanish, unless a majority of the Northern Ireland Assembly elects to keep them. I think that it is up to Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly to assemble that majority if they so choose. Further, there is an opportunity to vary those arrangements in the course of the free trade agreement and the new partnership that I hope he will join us in building together.

Prime Minister’s Statement

Debate between Boris Johnson and Sammy Wilson

Saturday 19th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

There speaks the true voice of Scotland! My hon. Friend is perfectly correct in what she says, and I venture to say that the constituents of SNP Members overwhelmingly tonight want that party —even that party—to get Brexit done and move this country on. I bet they do, Mr Speaker!

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

The Prime Minister has said there will be no border down the Irish sea, yet every good imported from GB to Northern Ireland will be subject to a customs declaration, a physical movement subject to checks, and tariffs have to be paid until it can be proved where the goods are going to. Will he accept that while he may have avoided a regulatory border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, he has put a legal, customs and economic border between the country to which we belong and the economy on which we depend? Rather than a great deal, this will do a great deal of damage to the Union.

[The Prime Minister]

On the contrary. What this does is protect Northern Ireland by extracting Northern Ireland whole and entire from the EU customs union and allowing Northern Ireland to join the whole UK in setting our own tariffs. In so far as there may be checks at a few places in Northern Ireland, physical checks would involve only 1% of the goods coming in. If that is too much of a burden, it is open to the people of Northern Ireland, by a majority, to decide that they no longer wish to participate in those arrangements. It is being done by consent. It is a very, very ingenious scheme that gets Northern Ireland out of the customs union and allows the whole UK to do free trade together, with minimum bureaucracy.

Debate on the Address

Debate between Boris Johnson and Sammy Wilson

Monday 14th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Not only can I give my hon. Friend that absolute and unequivocal guarantee, but I am delighted to say that 2 million EU nationals in this country have already registered under the EU registration system.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Can the Prime Minister give us an assurance that, in keeping with his one nation philosophy, the legislation that he intends to introduce to protect members of the armed forces will include those who served in Northern Ireland, and that he will not be distracted from that by the efforts of the Northern Ireland Office, which would try to placate Sinn Féin rather than protect soldiers?

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I know that he campaigns passionately on this issue and I merely repeat what I think he would agree with: no one should escape justice for a crime he or she may have committed, but it cannot be right that people should face unfair prosecutions when no new evidence has been forthcoming, and that applies across the whole of our country.

This is a one nation Government who insist on dealing not only with crime but the causes of crime—as a former Labour leader once put, it by the way—and on tackling all the causes of mental ill health or alienation in young people. That is why today we announced a new programme to purge online harms from the internet and to invest massively in youth clubs. We vow, as one nation Conservatives, never to abandon anyone—never to write off any young person because they have been in prison, but to help them into work, and, by investing in prisons, as we are, to prevent them from becoming academies of crime.

When we tackle crime as one nation Conservatives, and when we tackle the problems of mental ill health, we are doing something for the social justice of the country, because we all know that it is the poorest and the neediest who are disproportionately the victims of crime, and we know that it is the poorest who are most likely to suffer from mental ill health. It is our job, as a campaigning Government, to level up investment across the nation, and I am proud that we are now seeing the biggest programme of investment in the NHS for a generation. In 10 years’ time, as a result of decisions being taken now, there will be 40 new hospitals. We have fantastic NHS staff—the best in the world—and it is time to give them the funding and facilities they deserve.

Opposition Members have shouted about education. I am proud we are levelling up with a £14 billion programme of investment in our primary and secondary schools, and I hope they will support that, because we believe that is the best way to create opportunity and spread it more fairly and uniformly across the country, to give every child a superb education.

Iran Nuclear Deal

Debate between Boris Johnson and Sammy Wilson

Wednesday 9th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I can assure my right hon. Friend that we repeatedly raise the issues of human rights, the treatment of the Baha’i and other frankly disgusting aspects, not least the death penalty—there are many disgusting aspects of the behaviour of the Iranian regime—whenever we meet our Iranian counterparts.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

The Israeli Government do not believe that Iran is abiding by the terms of the agreement. Iranian opposition groups are saying that the Iranian regime is using revenue from the lifting of sanctions to finance terrorism across the middle east, and of course Iran has played an important part in the conflict in Syria and Yemen. In the light of that behaviour, does the Foreign Secretary accept that the decision by the American President has some validity, and that it will send an important message to a regime that is out of control?

[Boris Johnson]

On the contrary—I thought that the most powerful point about Benjamin Netanyahu’s slideshow was that it showed that Iran did indeed have a nuclear weapons ambition up to 2003, and it showed, therefore, the importance of beginning a process of negotiation to get Iran to stop that ambition, and that is what the JCPOA did. I remind the hon. Gentleman and others in the House that many sanctions on Iran are currently in place, and they will abide.

Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [Lords]

Debate between Boris Johnson and Sammy Wilson

2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 20th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I do not know the exact stage of the directive at the moment. To the best of my knowledge, we are in the process of implementing it. It should creep in under the wire and will, I hope, have the beneficial effect that the right hon. Lady desires.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Boris Johnson]

I will not, if the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me.

As sanctions have serious consequences for the individuals and entities that are singled out, they should be employed only in accordance with the rule of law, so it may be helpful to the House if I describe the scrupulous procedure laid out in the Bill.

Whenever the Government intend to impose a new sanctions regime, a statutory instrument will be laid before Parliament. When selecting targets, we will apply the legal threshold of “reasonable grounds to suspect”, which is the standard that we currently use for UN and EU sanctions. Both the British Supreme Court and the EU’s general court—the former court of first instance—have endorsed the use of that threshold in recent cases, and it is vital that the UK and our international partners continue to employ the equivalent threshold so that our sanctions policies and theirs can be co-ordinated.

The Bill contains safeguards allowing those listed for sanctions to challenge their designation and receive swift redress if it is warranted. Sanctions are not ends in themselves; they must not be maintained simply out of inertia or force of habit once the necessity for them dies away. The Bill will entitle any designated person to request an administrative reassessment by the Secretary of State, who will have a duty to consider any such request as soon as reasonably practicable. The Secretary of State can amend or revoke the designation in response to new information or a change in the situation. As a last resort, the designated person can apply to challenge the Government’s decision in the courts under the principles of judicial review, and the Bill provides for classified evidence to be shared with the court as appropriate.

Britain is obliged by international law to enforce any sanctions agreed by the UN Security Council. If a court in this country believes that such a designation is unlawful, the Secretary of State can use his or her best endeavours to remove a name from a UN sanctions list, bolstered by the fact that Britain has permanent membership of the Security Council. If a Secretary of State declines to seek a delisting at the UN, the relevant individual could challenge that decision before the courts. In addition, the Bill obliges the Government to conduct an annual review of every sanctions regime and place a report before Parliament. The Government are also required to review each individual designation under all regimes every three years.

The Bill allows the Government to grant licences to allow certain activities that would otherwise be prohibited—for instance, to permit any individuals subject to asset freezes to pay for essential needs such as food or medicine. The Bill will also give the Government the power and flexibility to issue general licences that could, for example, allow aid agencies to provide humanitarian supplies in a country subjected to sanctions.

Korean Peninsula

Debate between Boris Johnson and Sammy Wilson

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

It is a great pity that some Opposition Members have chosen this occasion to attack the President of the United States, rather than those who caused the current crisis: the North Koreans.

The effect of sanctions is likely to be limited because we are dealing with a deranged, selfish leader who cares little about the suffering in his own country. Will the Secretary of State tell us what assessment has been made of who is helping the North Koreans to develop their bombs and missiles? What steps will we take against those countries if it is shown that they are helping this tyrant in his aspiration to have the means to strike other countries?

[Boris Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman asks an extremely good question. As I indicated in my answer a moment ago, we are looking into that very question. We have our suspicions, but as yet we have no hard information.