Owen Paterson: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her support and I totally agree: if we have the option to put this in, which the clause gives us, we should just get it in the Bill. We know that there will quickly be a diversion to hippos if we do not provide for that. I am fully aware that others want to speak, so I come to my last point, which is about enforcement. I had interesting negotiations with our...
Owen Paterson: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to register my heartfelt thanks to all the staff at the Midland Centre for Spinal Injuries at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in my constituency. Without their extraordinary skill, professionalism and simple human kindness, I would not be here today. The House of Commons Library confirms that an estimated 63% of Members of this House...
Owen Paterson: Further to the Prime Minister’s reply to the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) on the guidelines issued by the European Council on 15 December, will she confirm categorically that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, and that it will be the final settlement, combined with phase 1, that she will bring forward as legislation for us to approve in this House?
Owen Paterson: I am very touched, Mr Speaker. We all wish the Prime Minister the very best of luck today, and we hope she agrees a reciprocal free trade deal with zero tariffs. Does my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State agree that the bar for success is that the deal has to be better than World Trade Organisation terms, the terms on which we trade with huge parts of the rest of the world and with...
Owen Paterson: I am grateful that my hon. and learned Friend, who knows considerably more about the law than me, concurs with my comments that this new clause could be justiciable. On those grounds, I will not be supporting the hon. Lady’s new clause, but I hope that she has a satisfactory meeting with the Minister. I am more concerned about the promise in the Prime Minister’s article 50 letter—it was...
Owen Paterson: I apologise to you, Mr Hoyle, and to the Committee, for slipping out at a critical moment and missing part of the Minister’s speech. I wish to address new clause 70, moved by the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon). I wholly sympathise with the sentiments she expressed. I worked on Merseyside through the ’80s and ’90s, and I remember the bomb scares and the real horror. We did...
Owen Paterson: The Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency states that only 5% of Northern Ireland’s sales cross the border south and only 1.6% of the Republic’s exports go north. The Government paper, confirmed by the head of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, says that that is easily surmountable without a hard border. The Belfast agreement confirmed Northern Ireland as an integral part of...
Owen Paterson: To cheer up the miseries on the Opposition Benches, perhaps they would like to look at the prospective budget published by Economists for Free Trade in the week before the Budget. It is a really exciting prospectus that says that our economy will grow at 3% a year by 2025, providing an infrastructure surplus of £60 billion, which easily covers the £18.2 billion a year for the famous £350...
Owen Paterson: My right hon. and learned Friend’s stand on this issue has been completely consistent for decades, but can he stand up before the Committee and justify staying within the common fisheries policy on ecological, environmental, economic or social grounds?
Owen Paterson: Could the hon. Gentleman define the Labour party’s idea of leaving the European Union?
Owen Paterson: It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds). I endorse his comments, as well as those of the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith), and the Secretary of State, about the shocking events that occurred at the weekend. There is absolutely no place in Northern Ireland for pipe bombs. Following all the work and all the...
Owen Paterson: No, as others want to speak. It is simply not fair on the civil service to expect it to deliver this. So, without any great enthusiasm, I will be voting for the Bill tonight. I wish the budget had gone out to the local Members and there had been institutions spending this money months ago, but I wholeheartedly support what the Secretary of State has done, and I wholeheartedly sympathise with...
Owen Paterson: If the House of Commons votes down the new withdrawal Bill, will the consequence be that we will still leave on 29 March 2019, but without an agreement?
Owen Paterson: Last year, the European Union had a surplus with us of £71.8 billion. A report last week said that if we moved to tariffs, the German auto industry alone would lose 29,000 jobs. Was there any realisation at all, during my right hon. Friend’s discussions, of the impact of not discussing free trade arrangements, because it is massively in the interests of our partners to maintain reciprocal...
Owen Paterson: Today, a report estimated that should we move to a tariff regime, the German motor car industry alone could lose between 8,600 and 29,400 jobs. It is massively in the interests of the UK and our 27 partners that we establish reciprocal free trade based on a recognition of conformity of standards. In his conclusion, the Secretary of State says that he recognises that we have reached the limits...
Owen Paterson: I thank my right hon. Friend for her most encouraging statement. Recently in Washington, I found widespread enthusiasm among our American friends at the prospect of signing a free trade deal—[Interruption.]
Owen Paterson: I will say it again, Mr Speaker, for your benefit: I found widespread enthusiasm right across the American political firmament for the prospect of signing a free trade deal with the United Kingdom. Our American friends will welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, yet again, that we will leave the customs union, as that is a prerequisite for signing a deal. Will she give them her best...
Owen Paterson: I join the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) in congratulating the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) on her excellent maiden speech. We were all thoroughly in tune with her on the abuse she has suffered and I hope she will work with other Members on that. She paid a generous tribute to her predecessor, Sir Julian Brazier, who was a fine parliamentarian for many years....
Owen Paterson: My right hon. Friend is spot on. That is why the Government sensibly are going to bring forward primary legislation in this House on agriculture, fisheries and the environment. I ask the Labour party to look at its position. It is ludicrous. It has a leader who has rebelled against his party 617 times and has to be the most contumacious leader in this country’s political history. It...
Owen Paterson: May I also welcome my hon. Friend to the Front Bench? I welcome his comments to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who is completely wrong, because leaving the European Union will enable us to take our full role on international bodies such as the International Plant Protection Convention, the World Organisation for Animal Health and the Codex Alimentarius Commission....