Oral Answers to Questions

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Thursday 9th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

My hon. Friend is entirely right to point out that the naysayers and doom-mongers who said that the British economy would crash after we decided to leave the European Union have been proven wrong.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

8. What steps he is taking to ensure that maintaining human rights protections is included in negotiations on the UK leaving the EU.

[The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Mr David Davis)]

The UK has a long-standing tradition of ensuring that our rights and traditional liberties are protected domestically and of fulfilling our international human rights obligations. The decision to leave the European Union does not change any of that. That is the approach we will take as we enter negotiations, and I can confirm that the Government have no plans to withdraw from the European convention on human rights.

[Mr Cunningham]

Given that answer, will the Secretary of State set out a full and detailed list of all fundamental rights currently guaranteed under EU law and what approach the Government intend to take towards them?

[Mr Davis]

We will be putting the great repeal Bill in front of the House at some point in the near future. That will carry into British law the existing law of the European Union and the case law that goes with it. But British human rights have not depended on the European Union; they have been intrinsic to our history and our tradition, and we—I most of all—will continue to defend them.