Government’s EU Exit Analysis
Debate between Robin Walker and Geraint Davies(6 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Walker
Not now. The public have voted through a referendum to leave the European Union. We must deliver on that result, in the national interest. I agree with the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras that we should work together to ensure that, and that must include scrutiny.
Only yesterday the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe committed to ensuring that Parliament has the appropriate analysis on the terms of our exit from the European Union ahead of the vote on the final deal we agree with the European Union. That is entirely right and we will deliver on it. However, delivering on the referendum result, in the national interest, does mean being able to have a stable and secure policy-making process inside Government. It means Government taking seriously their obligation to preserve the security of our analysis and the work underpinning our negotiations, and receiving that analysis means Parliament sharing in that responsibility and obligation. As all Members of this House come together to deliver for the people the best possible outcome of the referendum result, it is with that sentiment that we will comply with the motion.
Brexit Deal: Referendum
Debate between Robin Walker and Geraint Davies(6 years, 4 months ago)
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Geraint Davies
As I explained at the time—the Minister has probably forgotten—I was in Strasbourg, making a speech on how disastrous Brexit would be. If those people who voted in good faith for Brexit now find that, because of the €40 billion, they have less money, rising inflation, higher costs, lost jobs and lower prospects and therefore change their mind and say, “Look, I was wrong,” should not they have a right to a say on the Brexit deal? Why not—
Mr Walker
I should perhaps ask the hon. Gentleman to give way. He is in danger of making another speech. I do not share his pessimism. I believe we can achieve a successful outcome to the process. The premise of his question is, therefore, wrong.
The hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) made an interesting speech. He talked about manifestos and elections. Indeed, it is worth noting that at the general election earlier this year more than 85% of people voted for parties that were committed to respecting the result of the referendum. Both the Labour and the Conservative party manifestos made such a commitment clear. The people have spoken and the Government have made it clear that we have listened. Rather than second-guess the British people’s decision to leave the European Union with a second or third referendum, the challenge now is to make a success of it, and that is how we are approaching the negotiations—anticipating success, not failure
It is vital that we try to reach an agreement that builds a strong relationship between Britain and the EU, as neighbours, allies and partners. I respect the point that the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) made—indeed, it is one I have made in previous debates, including the last time we had one on the referendum—but we need to bring people together through that process, and I believe that the Prime Minister’s speeches in Florence and at Lancaster House set out to do exactly that.
UK Exit from the European Union
Debate between Robin Walker and Geraint Davies(7 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Mr Robin Walker)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. May I also thank the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) for his earlier chairmanship of this wide-ranging debate? When studying these petitions, I recognised there was a wide range of views reflected in them. My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) did an excellent job of reflecting on those views in his introduction. As we have seen, the debate has gone even wider in some respects, touching on a number of things beyond even the six petitions we are debating.
I thank the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) for her kind welcome and assure her that I take the responsibilities she referred to very seriously. As someone who, like probably the majority of Members in the Chamber, campaigned on the remain side in the referendum, but who now recognises that we have to reflect on the mandate of the British people and deliver on that, I am determined to make sure we do that in a way that addresses some of the concerns that I and other Members raised during that campaign, but that delivers on what the British people have voted for.
As others have pointed out, it is a healthy development in our democracy that petitions that receive substantial support should be debated in Parliament. This is not the first petitions debate we have had; indeed, we have had some excellent debates already on issues such as the devolved Administrations and on having a second referendum. I am sorry that my hon. Friend—sorry, the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies); he was my friend when we served together on the Welsh Affairs Committee—was not there for the debate on the second referendum, because he might have been the only speaker in that debate to support what the petition called for. There were 13 speakers, including many from Labour and the Scottish National party, who all accepted that rerunning the referendum was not the right approach. Perhaps we missed his eloquent advocacy on that occasion.
Geraint Davies
I did not speak in that debate because I was speaking on behalf of socialists from 47 countries, as a member of the Socialist Group in the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. I spoke about the monstrosity and disaster of Brexit—the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) was there as well—and explained the reason we might need a second referendum, if what is negotiated by the Minister and his Department does not resemble in the slightest the reasonable expectations of those who voted to leave.
Mr Walker
I am grateful for that illustration of the hon. Gentleman’s views, but I think it is important that, in responding to this debate, I focus on the six petitions before us today, which were described with typical eloquence by the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) as a “six pack”, with a wide variety of flavours.
To cover the full Government response, let me first reiterate the Government’s approach to this important process. It is a process we have only one opportunity to get right, so it is right to take the correct amount of time over it. We have been consulting with a broad range of stakeholders following the referendum result, which it is right to do, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam pointed out. We are consulting with the devolved Administrations, with the overseas territories and crown dependencies, with businesses and with other interest groups to build a national consensus across the whole of the United Kingdom on our negotiating position. We will continue to involve the devolved Administrations in preparing the UK’s position.
The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union and the rest of the ministerial team have already heard from a wide variety of sectors and stakeholders. We will also be holding a series of roundtables in the coming weeks on a variety of topics, including aviation, life sciences, financial services, agriculture and fisheries and many more. Engagement will continue through a range of bilateral meetings, visits across the United Kingdom, and the Joint Ministerial Council, which engages senior figures from the devolved Administrations. That process is about building an informed and strong negotiating position for the whole UK, and I do not share the pessimism of the hon. Member for Swansea West on that position. I would gently point out, to a colleague for whom I have great respect, that the petition he spoke to, which had 4 million signatures, was not advocated or defended by any Member who spoke in that debate and does not appear to have the support of his own Front-Bench team or many Members of the House.
Three of the petitions we are discussing today concern article 50, when we will invoke it and how. Let me be clear: the British people have voted to leave the European Union, and their will must be respected and delivered on, but the process for leaving the EU and determining our future relationship is complex. I acknowledge that the largest petition we are debating—as my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam pointed out, it is the only one that would have reached the attention of the Petitions Committee on its own—calls for us to exercise article 50 with immediate effect. However, by not triggering article 50 immediately after the referendum—as the leader of the Labour party, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), originally suggested—we have given ourselves the time to develop a UK-wide negotiating strategy and to avoid setting the clock ticking until our objectives are clear and agreed.
It is also right that the Government should not let things drag on too long. We have had pressure both internally, as we can see from the petition, and externally, from some of our counterparts on the continent, who are clear that they want us to get on with the process. As the Prime Minister made clear, we will trigger article 50 before the end of March next year. That should reassure those who, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam probably rightly said, signed the petition thinking article 50 might never be invoked that we are getting on with the process and preparing the ground to make sure we can do that in the most effective way possible.
Geraint Davies
If I could ask for some clarification about the timing, is the objective of the Minister’s Department to try to reach certain negotiating goals, which are private at the moment, before the March deadline? If they do not reach those goals, is there any flexibility to manage the deadline in order to maximise the benefits for the British people, or is it just a hard Brexit—“You get what you get; that’s tough”?
Mr Walker
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, but as for setting out negotiating goals, he should be clear about what the Commission and Council have said about the article 50 process: that they do not want negotiations before it has started. Of course we need to prepare the strongest possible position for the UK, and we will engage where we can to make sure we set the terms for those negotiations, but it is not possible to pre-negotiate any particular deal ahead of the formal article 50 process, so I think he is perhaps setting unrealistic expectations.
Inward Investment (Wales)
Debate between Robin Walker and Geraint Davies(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Geraint Davies
We do not want a debt-driven, borrowing-driven economy—obviously not. We need people to be given the opportunities to get jobs, create wealth and pay some of that back in tax. Post-1997, we had the transfer of a situation where the previous Conservative Government—history is repeating itself, of course—saw ever fewer people in jobs, paying less tax, and they were forced to cut services and increase debt and borrowing. That changed with Labour getting Britain back to work. Later, post-2008, it was a special situation, with too much borrowing and on the back of that, sub-prime debt. I agree that the sustainable future is about working and paying our way, but it is not about cutting to such an extent that we deflate the private sector so that it cannot invest in new jobs. We need the economy going along, with investment in consumer markets and productive areas. Although there is some level of agreement, we differ slightly on our interpretation of the past.
Moving back to the future, what should the UK and Welsh Governments do to give Wales the best opportunity for economic growth? An area that we touched on in the report was UK Trade and Investment’s role, and I very much agree with the report’s recommendations. UKTI has 83 offices around the world, and they are opportunities to market Wales for inward investment and trade. The coalition Government, in their wisdom, decided to close down all the regional development agencies, so when we went to see UKTI in Berlin, Dusseldorf and so on, we asked what happens now when a German company comes along and says to UKTI, “We want to build a factory, a distillery, or whatever. Where should we go?” That used to be put on a computer platform that was drawn down by the RDAs, which would compete for that investment. As RDAs were abolished, that no longer happens, and clearly, there is an opening for Wales to move in to. Wales has great, ongoing opportunities to use UKTI to maximise the open goals that have been created by the Government taking the players off the pitch.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. As he will recall, when we travelled to Brussels as part of the Committee’s investigation—I thoroughly enjoyed working with him on the report—we were shocked when we heard from both UKTI in Brussels and from representatives of the Welsh Government there that they did not see their job as being to work with UKTI and to market Welsh opportunities. Indeed, UKTI said, despite what he has just said about RDAs, that it was getting attention more regularly from some English regions than they were from organisations promoting Wales. I am sure that he would agree that that situation ought to change.
Geraint Davies
I am grateful for that intervention. When we saw the Welsh Government office in Brussels, it made its top three priorities clear. The first, as it is in Brussels, was policy in the EU, and in particular where it impacts on Wales—the common agricultural policy, and the rest of it. The second was grants and funding opportunities. Convergence funding has provided billions of pounds of investment in Wales, and that must be a key priority. We have seen it throughout Wales: recently, at Swansea university, £60 million from the European Investment Bank was invested in the second campus, and the £20 million in convergence funding for that is vital. Its third priority was the profile of Wales—to brand Wales. Those are key issues.
As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, we asked whether a fourth priority should be inward investment and trade. I agree that it should, and the response we received was that the office would be happy to work with UKTI. My understanding is that we are moving down that track. The report is helpful in encouraging co-operation with UKTI, which has 83 offices, while Wales has much fewer. However, where Wales does have them, it should work in co-operation.
On the Welsh brand, I understand that the Welsh Government are now looking at a new marketing strategy, which again, I very much welcome. There are big opportunities to push forward the Welsh identity, and I think that castles should be considered. If Members will indulge me for a moment, having a background in multinational companies and global brands, the castles around Wales symbolise romance, history, culture, strengths and endurance, which are all qualities of Wales. It is all part of inward investment and tourism. The dragon tends to be slightly overwhelmed by the Chinese dragon, but there is hope yet. [Interruption.] Okay, let’s keep the dragon—sorry about that.
Moving forward, it is not only about castles; it is about having a unique, clear identity for Wales in the global marketplace. The report referred to the success of the Welsh Development Agency. Some feel that if that brand still existed, it might be able to be re-harnessed in some respect. The report also suggests that we work in co-operation with private sector practitioners on the ground. The report’s basis was to get entrepreneurs, inward investors, multinationals, academics and an array of people in the economic community to give their view on what we should do, and we should be open-minded about taking advice as the global environment changes.
The report is obviously a place in time, and a similar report will be needed downstream, because clearly, things are changing, and the role of the public and private sectors is important in providing the instruments for success in future. Few people know, when they look at some of the great global successes, such as the Apple iPhone, that some of the technology—the touch-screen and voice sensitivities—was delivered by the public sector, by a scientific foundation in the United States. Apple then took that and made it a global brand. Some people seem to think, “Oh well, it’s the private sector. They know what they are doing,” but fundamental science and innovation is vital for commercial success. The issue is to have that link between the academic, and research and development, going through to commercial success.
I mention that because it is mentioned in our report and it is alive and well in our great city of Swansea—in Swansea university, in the first instance. People there are changing the rules. Within Swansea university, instead of having a silo situation, with the engineering department here, medicine there and so on, they mix it up so that the engineers are in with the medics. In terms of life sciences, development of nanoproducts and so on, they are working with inward investors in producing global brands. They have the support of Rolls-Royce, BP and others in relation to the development of a second campus worth £200 million. As I mentioned, the investment in that from Europe has been critical. Those coalition Members—in particular, the Tories, of course—who say yah-boo to the Europeans need to realise that a joined-up approach whereby we are working together to have a strong Europe and a strong Wales within Britain within Europe is vital for the future. We cannot retrench to become fish and chip shop Britain, as many on the Conservative Benches would like to see us.