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Donate to our crowdfunderDominic Raab: ...special relationship. I spoke to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, affirming our leading role in NATO and our commitment to it. Above all, I am focused on supporting the Prime Minister in getting Brexit done so that this country can move forward as an open, outward-looking country with global reach and global ambition.
Dominic Raab: ...1,000 more staff members and boast more sovereign missions than any other European country. The department has also provided extensive support to the government’s efforts to prepare for Brexit. This has included contingency planning for a ‘No Deal’ situation, engagement to influence the EU on negotiation priorities and an extension to Article 50, providing support to UK nationals...
Dominic Raab: I thank the Chair of the Brexit Committee. I would share many of his concerns in relation to this. The key point right now is to be working with our allies right across the transatlantic spectrum, with NATO, the US and our European friends, to try to exercise maximum restraint and maximum leverage on Turkey. Both in this case and more generally—because we will see a whole range of threats...
Dominic Raab: While we differ on Brexit, I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman makes, but it is why we have been engaged with our EU partners. We engaged closely on the Foreign Affairs Council conclusions on Monday. We have set out clearly our shared condemnation of Turkey and the measures that now need to be taken for Turkey to withdraw and come back into the NATO fold.
Dominic Raab: I can give my right hon. Friend that reassurance. I do understand, and we have always managed to stay on civil, cordial, even amiable terms throughout all the challenges of Brexit, which we on both sides of the House should seek to do. Parliament of course has a crucial role to play. I do not think anyone can legitimately say that Parliament, with the stalwart support of the Speaker, has not...
Dominic Raab: ...Windrush generation. We have apologised for the mistakes that were made and, to date, over 7,200 individuals have been given documentation confirming their status. The hon. Gentleman talks about Brexit, which has been a divisive issue for all parties and people right across this country. The best way of resolving that and bringing the country together is to get a deal, get Brexit done,...
Dominic Raab: ...absolutely zero tolerance for, any domestic abuse. The best way forward is for us to work together in a collaborative way, which, frankly, we have not seen in recent months and years because of Brexit. That opportunity will come today, when we debate the Domestic Abuse Bill on Second Reading.
Dominic Raab: ...October in order to maintain public trust in our democracy and avoid the public feeling that parliamentarians and politicians do not listen to what they have said. If she wants to avoid a no-deal Brexit, get behind the Government in securing a deal that all sides can support.
Dominic Raab: ...invest for technology and innovation, and that is part of the vision of global Britain. So I pay tribute to the project in my hon. Friend’s constituency. That is what we can deliver if we can get Brexit done and dusted and move on, and allow the people of this country to move on.
Dominic Raab: I know that the right hon. Lady and I have different views on Brexit, but we have always got on professionally and civilly in the past, and I understand the passion with which she holds her views. But I think a second referendum will be the last thing this country wants. It would solve nothing and put the Union at risk, because it would be a political gift to the SNP. If she wants to avoid no...
Dominic Raab: My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we need to get Brexit done. The country wants us to move on and to keep faith with the voters. As for the position of the Liberal Democrats, of all the different views in the House of Commons, I find this the most difficult to understand. How could we have 16 Liberal Democrat MEPs actually writing to Jean-Claude Juncker telling him not to negotiate or...
Dominic Raab: I thank the hon. Lady for the measured and careful way in which she has responded to this issue. Amidst all the Brexit divisions we have, it is important that we have some cross-party consensus where it is practicable on this issue, because that allows us to send the clearest signal to our international partners, and indeed to Hong Kong and China, on its importance, so I welcome that. I share...
Dominic Raab: ...but because hon. Members voted for a referendum and promised repeatedly to respect the result, and yet now people see that the Leader of the Opposition and others have repeatedly tried to frustrate Brexit. The right hon. Gentleman has now made it clear that that is Labour party policy. The ballot paper in 2016 did not say, “Leave, if and only if Brussels agrees a deal”; it did not...
Dominic Raab: Last week, I attended the Gymnich meeting of EU Foreign Ministers. I met the Foreign Ministers of France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Cyprus and Finland. We discussed Brexit but also the wide range of international foreign policy issues on which we will continue to co-operate beyond 31 October, from Hong Kong to Iran.
Dominic Raab: ...would point him, for example, to the views set out on the BBC, on the “Today” programme, by Mervyn King, a former Governor of the Bank of England. He is not known to be in hock to the Tories or Brexit, but he said very clearly that we should get on with it, that the short-term risks were manageable and that there were also opportunities. That is the approach we take.
Dominic Raab: ...and medicines, the UK has a long-standing relationship with pharmaceutical companies, through the NHS, involving hundreds of vaccines and medicines, whereby we do stockpile, without any context of Brexit, but in the ordinary course of events. Both the Health Secretary and the head of the NHS have made it clear that the plans and arrangements are in place to make sure that people can...
Dominic Raab: ...to follow the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), even though I take a fundamentally different view. Last November, I resigned from the Cabinet because I could not support the Government’s Brexit deal, and I tell the House that I still believe it to be a bad deal. With the Government purporting to take no deal off the table and their acquiescence in the extension of article 50, I...
Dominic Raab: ...have taken gives rise to the very real concern that they would acquiesce in a further long extension, which on both sides of the channel would be used to try to exhaust the UK into revoking Brexit altogether. That is something that I believe we must not entertain or allow. In fairness to the Government, I also recognise that they have provided some additional assurances at the domestic...
Dominic Raab: ...the House on 29 January to deliver a legally binding change to the backstop, and to press the Malthouse compromise as an alternative in Brussels. I want the Prime Minister to be able to deliver Brexit, and I want the Government to be able to deliver and make a success of Brexit. I also want it to be crystal clear that the only way we will leave on WTO terms is by the choice of the EU...
Dominic Raab: ...half the country, which would immediately and directly conflict with those rules. On the one hand he personally is widely regarded, although he does not say so explicitly, as being a proponent of Brexit—he wants to leave the EU, along with many on his side and on his Benches, and of course it is a requirement of the 2017 Labour manifesto—but on the other hand he is willing to trade...