Priorities for the Government — House of Lords, 2019-07-25
Topic: International Affairs
Natalie Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the noble Baroness and the noble Lord for their comments. I start by saying that the focus and aim are on getting a deal, and we believe that that is still possible. That has been very clear from the Statement. The Prime Minister has made it clear that he is very keen to engage as quickly as possible with the EU, along with my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the EU, to see whether we can break the current deadlock. We have to remember that the current agreement has been rejected by the House of Commons three times. We need to address that and we hope that we will be able to do so. However, because we have not been able to get the withdrawal agreement through, we are having to focus on no-deal plans We have made a lot of preparations but the Statement reflects, as the noble Lord said, that we need to do more. That is why there will be a renewed focus and co-ordination through the Cabinet Office to make sure that we build on the preparations that we have already made. As I said, £4.2 billion has already been spent on preparations for all EU exit scenarios, and more funding will be made available if required. There is also a plan to start a new communications campaign to ensure that people are prepared. That will be on top of the 750 communications on no deal that we have published since August 2018. Noble Lords will know, for instance, that we have reached trade agreements with partners worth around £70 billion of current trade and we have an agreement in principle with South Korea that represents another £15 billion The noble Baroness and the noble Lord also talked about Northern Ireland. As has been made very clear, we are steadfastly committed to the Belfast agreement. They will be aware that exploration of alternative arrangements had already been accepted by the EU and was within the withdrawal agreement. Work is beginning on that and groups have been set up. There are various arrangements, including trusted trader schemes and electronic pre-registering, that can be looked at and brought together to help ensure that we never have to use the backstop. We can look at developing this technology to ensure that our commitments to Northern Ireland are kept The noble Baroness talked about some of the domestic issues and she is absolutely right. I myself am particularly interested in education. We will ensure that our education system enjoys real-terms increases, meaning that the budget will, over the course of this Parliament, increase by £4.6 billion a year. We have announced that we will up the levels of per-pupil funding in primary and secondary schools. We will make sure that the minimum primary school level of funding goes up to £4,000 and that the secondary school level goes up to £5,000 The noble Lord asked about the Australian immigration system. The Prime Minister has asked the Migration Advisory Committee to make sure that we can learn what works best in the system and what lessons we can copy for our new system. It is not about committing to copy the Australian system wholesale; it is about learning from best practice and what works well Finally, the noble Baroness rightly raised the extremely concerning situation of Mrs Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. We are very concerned about her welfare. We are in regular contact with her family and our embassy in Tehran continues to request consular access. Whatever disagreements we have with Iran, an innocent woman must not be a victim, and we will continue to work to ensure that she can come home.