Yvette Cooper
Main Page: Yvette Cooper (Labour - Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford)Department Debates - View all Yvette Cooper's debates with the HM Treasury
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Elizabeth Truss
As my right hon. Friend points out, it is important that we move on to the next stage of the negotiations and talk about our long-term relationship with the European Union once we have left. That is exactly what we seek to do.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
The problem with the Chief Secretary’s answer is that all our constituents saw the slogan on the side of a bus. If the Government simply say nothing—if they keep radio silence for a long time—and then suddenly pluck a figure out of a hat at the end of the process, it will just be incomprehensible to everyone. Surely she can tell the House the kinds of things that the Government think they should be funding—pension contributions or whatever else—rather than just leaving everyone in the dark.
Elizabeth Truss
I refer the right hon. Lady to the Prime Minister’s Florence speech, in which she laid out the commitments that we want to continue to honour, in the spirit of our future partnership, after we have left the European Union. The right hon. Lady has to be aware that this is part of a discussion that is also about our future relationship, and all those elements are contingent on securing our future relationship, as the Prime Minister laid out in her Florence speech. It would be wrong at this stage—from the point of view of not only the negotiations, but transparency to the public—to lay out something before it is fully agreed. That would not be helpful.