Conduct of negotiations

Part of European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill – in the House of Commons at 1:15 pm on 8 February 2017.

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Photo of Paul Blomfield Paul Blomfield Shadow Minister (Exiting the European Union) 1:15, 8 February 2017

No, I will not. I should respond to Mrs Laing’s appeal for us to make progress.

It has been suggested that the Government’s reservations about Euratom stem from the fact that the European Court of Justice is the regulatory body for the treaty. If that is so, their obsessional opposition to the Court of Justice leads them to want to rip up our membership of an organisation on which 21% of UK electricity generation relies and that supports a critical industry providing 78,000 jobs; that number is projected to rise to 110,000 by 2021. That membership led to us hosting the biggest nuclear fusion programme in the world in Culham.