Article 50
Debate between Neil Gray and David Davis(7 years, 3 months ago)
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Neil Gray
Thank you, Mr Speaker. Given that a legislative consent motion is now apparently a political decision and there is no impediment to the Government bringing one forward, will the Secretary of State advise us whether the Government had a legislative consent contingency in place before the Supreme Court ruling and why on earth he would rule out bringing one forward now?
New Partnership with the EU
Debate between Neil Gray and David Davis(7 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Davis
As nonsense questions go, that pretty much takes the biscuit. We have made very plain indeed what we intend in this regard. We are a dominant scientific power in the European Union. We have worked night and day to ensure that we guarantee the position of students and research grants, and we will continue to do so. If the hon. Gentleman plays that down, he will harm the very sector that he is supposedly trying to protect.
Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
Given that nearly everything that has been said by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State today is incompatible with the Scottish Government’s “Scotland in Europe” compromise document, how do the UK Government plan to honour the promise to take those proposals seriously, unless they now plan to explore all options to support continuing Scottish membership of the single market?
Mr Davis
As I said in an earlier answer, that paper will come before us in a few days’ time. It has, of course, more than one component. The hon. Gentleman talks as though it were only about the so-called—opt-out, do they call it? But it also contains questions about devolution, and the treatment of employment and immigration, all of which we will discuss at that time. We will treat those questions seriously, as we always have.
Parliamentary Scrutiny of Leaving the EU
Debate between Neil Gray and David Davis(7 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Davis
In a moment.
I also made a commitment in September that this Parliament will be at least as informed of progress in our negotiations as the European Parliament. The hon. and learned Gentleman did not appear to believe it when I told the Lords, but it was also made plain to the Foreign Affairs Committee. We are setting up administrative procedures to ensure that, when this becomes relevant in a month or two, these things happen and happen quickly, so that we do not have to go to an EU website to find what we want to know. That will be the minimum, but Members should understand that we will be going considerably beyond that.
Mr Davis
In a moment—a very Scot Nat way of getting attention.
I made the commitment that Parliament be kept at least as informed as, and better informed than, the European Parliament. I have also asked the Chief Whip through the usual channels to ensure that we have a series of debates so that the House can air its views. Again, it would be very surprising if we had those debates without presenting to the House something for it to debate.
Neil Gray
I refer back to the question from the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), which I do not think the Secretary of State answered adequately. You are either a member of the single market or you are not. It is clear now that the Government need to spell things out: are they in favour of being members of the single market or are they not? Inform the House.
Mr Davis
It is astonishing how linear, or black and white, some Members think this is. We have Norway, which is inside the single market and outside the customs union; we have Turkey, which is inside the customs union and outside the single market; and we have Switzerland, which is not in the single market but has equivalent access to all of its productive and manufacturing services. There is not a single entity, but a spectrum of outcomes, and we will be seeking to get the best of that spectrum of outcomes.
Tax Credits
Debate between Neil Gray and David Davis(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
It is a privilege to speak in this debate. I am one of its co-sponsors, but the entire credit for the idea belongs to the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field). He rightly identified the need for a cross-party, less partisan and, as it turns out, non-binding debate to allow everyone properly to explore these issues in the national interest without being fettered by feelings of joining one side or the other in the playground of politics.
The result has, I think, been good. I think this has been the best debate so far of a number on this subject. It falls on us all to be honest about it. This policy was a mistake. One can only think that, because I am sure that nobody in any party would intend deliberately to impoverish the working poor with dependent families—I am afraid I do differentiate in this context.
Mr Davis
Not for the moment.
The problem was compounded by the method employed—the measure was introduced by statutory instrument, and is therefore unamendable—and by a lack of sufficient information. As four or five Members have already pointed out today, there was no proper impact statement. Had the measure been introduced in primary legislation and thus been amendable, and had the Government provided proper information, the measure would not have gone to the House of Lords in its current form; it would have been reformed in this House, and that is what should have happened.
I subscribe to the Government’s wish to balance the books by 2020, which I consider to be an eminently sensible and responsible aim. However, I also subscribe to the view that we need to protect the poor at all costs. The question is, how do we identify what this policy does? I wanted to find some examples that would enable us to assess both sides of the argument—not just the attack, but the Government’s line as well—and I thank the Chancellor’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore), for being so helpful in that regard. I put some of the points that he made in defence of the policy to the House of Commons Library, and I shall now give a couple of examples that the Library supplied to illustrate its impact.
The worst-case example that I could find was that of a working single parent with two children, who, without the mitigating effects, could be £2,000 a year worse off in virtually every year until 2020. That is an unbelievable sum to take from a family who are already poor. If the family were eligible for mitigation, in particular housing benefit, the sum could be reduced to roughly £700—the fine detail is unreliable—but, again, it would be lost in virtually every one of the next four or five years,
The great battle over the 10% rate when Labour was in power involved sums that were a quarter of that amount. The great battles over the poll tax, which I remember only too well, involved sums of that size. The impact on a family who are already on the poverty line, by definition, is unspeakable and unthinkable. I grew up in a rather poorer era, and I remember children being hungry on Fridays when the bills were just a bit too big, or it was cold and the heating costs were too high.