argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
G20 Summit — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: Technology
Theresa Mary May (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have a firm commitment as a Government to increase the percentage of GDP being spent on research and development to 2.4%—that is both public and private sector investment. This is the way that we can ensure that we are investing in the jobs of the future.
G20 Summit — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: Macroeconomics
Theresa Mary May (Conservative, Centre-right): What was discussed was the importance of ensuring that economic development benefits all people, including those who currently feel that they are not benefiting from it and obviously including disabled people. A number of events around the margins of the G20 also addressed a number of these issues.
G20 Summit — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: Foreign Trade
Chris Ian Brian Mynott Philp (Conservative, Centre-right): The Prime Minister mentioned in her statement the importance of securing free trade deals around the world, yet some Members of this House are proposing the so-called Norway-plus option—membership of the single market and the EU customs union, most likely with a backstop. Does she agree that that would prevent free trade deals from being done, that we would still be paying money in and that there would be unlimited free movement, and will she join me in saying that would be an extremely bad choice for our country?
G20 Summit — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: Foreign Trade
Theresa Mary May (Conservative, Centre-right): I am happy to confirm what my hon. Friend has said. That option would indeed mean that we would continue to pay and would have to accept free movement; the Norway-plus model also has the issue of the customs union. We have negotiated a deal that is right for the United Kingdom.
Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Charles Geoffrey Cox (Conservative, Centre-right): It is very rare for the Attorney General to appear to answer questions in the House on matters of law. I am doing so, so that Opposition and Government Members can have a full, frank and thorough opportunity to ask me, as the Government’s chief legal adviser and as an adviser to the House on constitutional and legal matters, what our legal position is. I assure the House that if questions are asked, I shall answer them candidly The hon. Gentleman told me that I had not said anything about the subsistence of the Northern Ireland protocol. Let me make no bones about the Northern Ireland protocol: it will subsist. We are indefinitely committed to it if it comes into force. There is no point in my trying or the Government trying to disguise that fact. The truth, however, is this: what is the political imperative of either entering into it or not entering into it? That is a calculated equation of risk that each Member of this House is going to have to weigh up, and do so against different alternatives The hon. Gentleman also mentioned that I should answer whether other treaties are permanent. Hundreds of treaties throughout the world are permanent—treaties on borders, treaties on rivers; the Vienna convention has entire sections on permanent treaties. If the hon. Gentleman wants me to enumerate some, I will write to him with them—I am afraid I do not have them to hand. There is an entire section of the Vienna convention on permanent treaties. The question whether we have a right to terminate under the convention is a matter of construction. Let me make it plain: there is no such right to terminate if the Northern Ireland protocol comes into force. The question of how likely it is to remain in force is a political judgment to be based on factors largely relating, as I have said, to in whose interests it would be to remain in it for longest. [Interruption.]
Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Kenneth Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): Whether that will cheer people up or not, I have no idea First, I sincerely congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General on his masterly exposition of the facts and the law, which put paid to quite a lot of the paranoia and conspiracy theories that have been running around all too often in our European debate Secondly, does my right hon. and learned Friend accept that it was central to the Good Friday agreement—the Belfast agreement—that both sides committed themselves timelessly to an open border, and that will be all wrapped up if we ever move to the Northern Ireland protocol? It would be quite shameful if the European Union, the Republic of Ireland or the United Kingdom were given the right unilaterally to terminate that arrangement at a time of their political choosing, so this is perfectly sensible. Does he also agree that both the United Kingdom and the European Union will have reasons to hesitate before going into the protocol—they may prefer to extend the transition agreement—and that neither of the parties will have any political motive for staying indefinitely in that protocol In his exposition, I think my right hon. and learned Friend has done what he was trying to do: got rid of all these theories about the ECJ still being involved, as it obviously will have to be, in the rights of British citizens after we leave, and enabled the House to get back to the real political debate that we have to have in the next few days.
Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Charles Geoffrey Cox (Conservative, Centre-right): I am most grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for his question. The truth of the matter is that the Northern Ireland protocol would represent a solemn commitment to the people of Northern Ireland that this Government will honour and respect the Belfast agreement. I make no bones about it: I would have preferred to have seen a unilateral right of termination in the backstop. I would have preferred to have seen a clause that allowed us to exit if negotiations had broken down irretrievably, but I am prepared to lend my support to this agreement because I do not believe—[Interruption.] I am most grateful for those cheers of applause. I do not believe that we are likely to be entrapped in the backstop permanently. I can give reasons why I say that, but my right hon. and learned Friend has foreshadowed them. So I agree with him: this represents a sensible compromise. It has unattractive and unsatisfactory elements for us, but it is for the House to weigh it up against the potential alternatives and to assess whether it amounts to a calculated risk that this Government and this House should take in these circumstances, weighed up against the realities of the alternatives.
Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Charles Geoffrey Cox (Conservative, Centre-right): I have the greatest respect for the hon. and learned Lady. She has put her case rationally and reasonably, and I will deal with her points one by one. She asked whether there was anything to prevent the protocol from becoming permanent in the event of no agreement. As a matter of international law, no there is not—it would endure indefinitely, pending a future agreement being arranged—but that does not exhaust all the matters of law. As a matter of EU law, it would, in those circumstances, be highly vulnerable to legal challenge. It is widely accepted, including by the EU Commission and taskforce 50, that article 50 is not a sound legal foundation for permanent arrangements between states. If negotiations irretrievably broke down, the protocol would de facto become permanent and therefore seriously challengeable in the Court of Justice of the European Union for being invalid. That legal uncertainty by itself is sufficient to promote to the EU the need to do a deal with us. It would be profoundly detrimental to thousands—indeed millions—of traders throughout the single market. That is one factor that convinces me that this is a risk worth taking.
Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): I start by welcoming without reservation my right hon. and learned Friend to his position. He knows that I have believed for many years that he should have filled this post. I welcome my right hon. and learned Friend’s statement. Page 6 of his document refers to what is defined as "good faith". He mentioned the International Court of Justice, so I hope he will not mind if I quote from one of its judgments referenced in footnote 8. He talked about how long the backstop should last and what defined "good faith". The judgment states that "the failure of the Parties to reach agreement, 16 years after the conclusion of"— earlier negotiations— "does not itself establish that either Party has breached its obligation to negotiate in good faith." As my right hon. and learned Friend knows, his right hon. Friends on the Front Bench one by one have used good faith as their defence for being locked into this problem of the backstop and as their explanation of how we will get out. As a matter of law, is good faith required for best endeavours?
Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Charles Geoffrey Cox (Conservative, Centre-right): The duty of good faith and to use best endeavours is a legally enforceable duty. There is no doubt that it is difficult to prove—[Interruption]—as I hear from a sedentary position, but that is not to say that it has not been proven. The case reports of the International Court of Justice, as well as arbitral tribunals throughout the world, have recorded decisions where tribunals have found breaches of good faith duties. There would need to be clear and convincing evidence that the breakdown of communication was due to bad faith—I fully accept that—but if the EU refused to engage with us, strung out negotiations in a thoroughly unreasonable way or failed to observe reasonable time limits, those would be hallmarks of a possible case of breach of good faith. It is a meaningful legal obligation I remind the House that we are dealing here with the United Kingdom on one hand and the European Union on the other. Their reputations in international forums, and their reputations as a question of international law, are at stake. If you put your name to a solemn legal obligation to negotiate something in good faith within a certain time limit, it is a very serious obligation of which to acquit yourself: it cannot just be played fast and loose with.
Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Charles Geoffrey Cox (Conservative, Centre-right): The right hon. Gentleman has thrown down the gauntlet in asking me to re-examine my support for the agreement. I do not mind confessing to him that I have wrestled with this question, because I am a Unionist and dislike any divergence between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom; but I have had also to take into account first that this is an arrangement that we can avoid, and secondly that if we were in it, it would be as much an instrument of pain to the European Union as it would be to the United Kingdom I ask the right hon. Gentleman to think of what the European Union is now accepting. It accepts that Northern Ireland can have free circulation of its goods not only into the single market, but to Great Britain. No other single market trader will have that advantage. Hundreds of single market traders throughout the European Union are going to resent the fact that the goods of a Northern Ireland business situated one mile north of the border can flow smoothly into the single market and smoothly into Great Britain, while theirs cannot. So there are real reasons, which the right hon. Gentleman and I can discuss at greater length, why I do not believe that this will become a permanent solution Let us suppose, however, that those negotiations broke down or took an unreasonable length of time. All around the European Union there will be single market traders seeing the benefits that Northern Ireland can have, who will be induced by those benefits to ask, "Should we go on putting up with this uncompetitive arrangement?" And what are they likely to do? Why, they are likely to beat a path to the door of the Commission and the Court, and there to say, "Didn’t you say that article 50 is not a sound legal foundation for this arrangement?" And I tell you frankly, Mr Speaker, they are likely to win.
Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: Law and Crime
Charles Geoffrey Cox (Conservative, Centre-right): This is not a question of the lawfulness of the Government’s action, as it was in the publication of Lord Goldsmith’s advice; this is simply a view on the legal effects of a particular agreement. There are hundreds of lawyers throughout the United Kingdom, I am delighted to say, who could offer a perfectly competent view on this agreement. I cannot see why there is anything exceptional about the current circumstances and about my advice. But let us suppose there were something exceptional about my advice; well, I am here to be asked any question that the Government have also asked, so all that right hon. and hon. Opposition Members have to do is ask and I will give them a frank answer.
Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: Government Operations
Charles Geoffrey Cox (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Lady for that question. The truth is that I am caught in an acute clash of constitutional principle. A Minister is obliged to have regard to the public interest and the national interest. Let us suppose I had given any such advice that has been requested by the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), and let us suppose that that advice had covered all sorts of matters, including our relationships with foreign states and including arguments that might be deployed in the future—and their strengths and weaknesses—and including matters of acute importance to this country; would it be right for the Attorney General, regardless of the harm to the public interest, to divulge his opinion? I say to the right hon. and learned Lady that it would not. There is no procedure by which this House can have redactions or entertain circumstances in which it could weigh the competing public interest against the interest in disclosure, as a judge would do. She knows what I mean. Therefore, I cannot take a step that I firmly and truly believe would be contrary to the public interest. I ask the House to understand that it is only that consideration that is motivating me and this Government in declining at this stage to break the convention that applies to both sides of the House when they are in government. There is nothing to see here. [Interruption.]
Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. and learned Friend is to be commended for his statement and for the document that has been produced, which I have to say from my own experience is rather fuller than any advice he might ever have been called upon to produce. First, it might be helpful to the House if he took this opportunity to confirm that there is nothing in this document that is incompatible with any advice that he gave to the Government? I would not expect him to be in a position to endorse any such document if it were at variance in that way. Secondly, turning away from that first principle to the content, might he also wish to comment on the provisions specific to Northern Ireland in paragraphs 25 to 29, which appear to show quite clearly that under the protocol it would be possible to end up with a situation in which there were in fact checks and controls on good passing between Northern Ireland and the rest of Great Britain?
Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Charles Geoffrey Cox (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend. He will understand that if I were to make that express confirmation, I would by that means be disclosing what advice, if any, I had given. I hope that the House will understand—unless it is to be supposed that I would tailor my advice according to my audience, which I assure the House I would not do—that there is no matter on which hon. Members could ask me a question on which I am likely to have given a different answer to any other party who might have asked me about it in the course of these negotiations. In all candour, therefore, I can say that all the House has to do is ask In relation to my right hon. and learned Friend’s second question, it is true that there would be regulatory divergences—as there are within sovereign states throughout the world—between one part of the sovereign territory of the United Kingdom and another, but those divergences could be kept to a minimum. They involve, on my investigation, some 15 forms of product in respect of which checks might have to be carried out at the border. Those 15 forms of product are largely phytosanitary goods in respect of which checks are already carried out in many cases at the ports of Northern Ireland. Therefore, while that border would exist—I find that distasteful myself—the issues are nevertheless mitigable, and the question again is whether that feature should lead us to decline this deal, which I firmly believe is the best way of ensuring that we leave the European Union on 29 March. That is the solemn responsibility that this side of the House—and some on the Opposition side—believed that we had. This is the deal that will ensure that that happens in an orderly way and with legal certainty.
Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Charles Geoffrey Cox (Conservative, Centre-right): The right hon. Gentleman points out that we are in a unique situation. There has never been a case in which a country has seceded from the European Union, and there has never been a case in which 45 years of legal integration of a state the size of the United Kingdom has been untangled. That will take time, and it must be done in an orderly way. I will write to the right hon. Gentleman if there are any specific examples to assist me, but the fact of the matter is that I doubt it, which is the frank answer, because we are in this extraordinary and unique situation To address the first part of the right hon. Gentleman’s question, I will repeat myself: what does he expect us to do? When he was a member of the Cabinet, if he believed that to take an action would be fundamentally contrary to the public interest of this country, I suspect that he would find that a difficult situation to resolve. The House’s resolution is entitled to the greatest of respect, and the Government and I are inclined to do as much as we can and to go as far as we can, which is why I have come to the House today—it has barely happened more than a few times in the past 50 or so years—to answer the House’s questions. However, I cannot take a step that I believe in conscience would be against the public interest and potentially seriously harmful to a fundamental constitutional principle and the temporal interests of this country in the midst of a negotiation.
Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Dominic Rennie Raab (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome the Attorney General’s transparency both in his oral statement to the House and in the Command Paper. First, will he confirm that the article 20 review mechanism necessitates that the EU agrees to the UK exiting the backstop even if the negotiations have dragged on for many years or, indeed, have broken down? Secondly, while the article 50 basis for the backstop is meant to be temporary, it might well take some 10 years for it to be struck down by the European Court of Justice. If he thinks that that is too long, will he give the House his best estimate?
Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: International Affairs
Charles Geoffrey Cox (Conservative, Centre-right): Article 20 permits both sides to consider, even when no final agreement has yet been reached, whether alternative arrangements might suffice to protect the stated objectives of the Northern Ireland protocol. If they do, both sides could agree to put in place those alternative arrangements before any final agreement had been reached It is important to remember that, when one says final agreement, it is of course possible, indeed likely, that it may be a series of agreements reached at different times. My answer to my right hon. Friend is that article 20 creates that ability, but it is not a unilateral right of termination. It does not give us a right to walk away. It creates a procedure and obliges the European Union to consider alternative arrangements that are not part of a final deal I think my right hon. Friend went on to ask me about article 50 and the time it might take. The period of years he mentions is probably far too long, but it is impossible to say. What one can say is that, long before any case is brought, the pressure bringing those cases to the Court would be telling upon the Governments of the member states and upon the European Union. The legal uncertainty would be intense, and it is a real factor that this House must weigh up in considering whether the protocol is something that it wishes to support.
Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: Foreign Trade
Charles Geoffrey Cox (Conservative, Centre-right): What I do say is that the customs arrangement under the backstop produces the following advantages. We pay not a penny and our goods have free access, in fiscal and tariff terms, to the European Union, yet the regulatory framework that we have to observe is dealt with by way of non-regression clauses that are not enforceable either by the EU institutions or by the arbitration arrangements under the withdrawal agreement. They are policed solely by British courts and British authorities In those circumstances, what does it mean? It means that they have split the four freedoms. They have created a situation where we can have the regulatory flexibility that they cannot. They have granted access to the single market for no contribution, without free movement, without signing up to the common fisheries policy and without signing up to the common agricultural policy. For all those reasons, what I say to the right hon. Lady is that if it is painful to us, it will be as painful to them. Where we want to end up is an arrangement that suits us both. This suits neither.
Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position — House of Commons, 2018-12-03
Topic: Government Operations
Charles Geoffrey Cox (Conservative, Centre-right): The regulatory regime in Great Britain will be a matter entirely for the Government of the United Kingdom. It is permitted and agreed under the protocol that they can maintain their regulatory regime in the way they choose, in which case they could choose to maintain, as I have no doubt they would wish to do, regulatory parity with the position in Northern Ireland. That is all the Secretary of State is saying, and I see nothing controversial in that.