Part of Backbench Business – in Westminster Hall at 2:30 pm on 10 July 2018.
The hon. Gentleman is clearly a learned man and I take his view that the great Shakespearean themes are perception and reality, and reality becomes perception and the other way round. But that is not true of course, and it is for those of us who are in this place to stand up and base our decisions on evidence, and to speak the truth. So it is absolutely clear to me that, as we need to protect jobs and businesses, and if we are ready to protect them as they are now, we do not need to sacrifice them for potential gains, if those gains look small and potentially unrealisable.