The Government's Plan for Brexit — House of Commons, 2016-12-07
Topic: International Affairs
Crispin Jeremy Rupert Blunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I come to this debate straight after returning from the United States, where I have spent three days meeting Congressmen, and I can say that the remarks made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) are absolutely right. There is terrific support in Congress for a free trade deal between the United Kingdom and the United States, and that view is shared by the President-elect. There is a terrific world of opportunity out there as we view our emerging role in the world Last week at Chatham House, the Foreign Secretary gave the first in a series of speeches outlining our global role. I recommend it to right hon. and hon. Members because it should lift their eyes from the rather parochial preoccupation with the British plan. The point that I was trying to make in my intervention on the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), was not that I somehow think that Europeans are the enemy. Of course I do not, and anyone who knows me knows that I do not believe that. I was making a graphic point about the plan. The whole quote goes on to say: "When your plan meets the real world, the real world wins. Nothing goes as planned. Errors pile up. Mistaken suppositions come back to bite you. The most brilliant plan loses touch with reality." I do not see any particular difficulty in discerning the key elements of the British plan. I heard nothing from Opposition Members or anyone else to suggest that we should not be taking back sovereign control of immigration, which was a key issue in the vote. That does not have any implications for what immigration policy will mean, but the idea that this process of leaving the European Union will end without this House having sovereign control of immigration is for the birds. Everyone understands that, but that result has implications We have heard in recent days from Michel Barnier and from the German Chancellor, who have made it perfectly clear that we will not be allowed to cherry-pick our relationship with the European Union. This is where we come to the key element in the negotiations. Were we to cherry-pick, we would of course want full access to the single market on current terms and sovereign control over immigration, but we would not want to pay into the budget or to have the European Court of Justice overseeing our courts. There is room to manoeuvre in all this, such as around money and what items in the relationship we might think it appropriate for the ECJ to adjudicate on, but my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) made the point that that relationship would be different from the one we have now. The problem in the negotiation lies not on our side; the 27 states have an immensely difficult task. Their interests lie in the continuation of the closest possible relationship with the United Kingdom. Their interests are in our making sense of a continued British engagement in the EU’s common foreign and security policy. Ireland’s interests are absolutely engaged in this discussion. A difficult deal for the United Kingdom is a catastrophic deal for the Republic of Ireland.