Extracts from second
reading debate (Commons) of the European Union (Notification
of Withdrawal) Bill
(Doncaster North)
(Lab):..As I understand it, the dual citizenship exemption
won by the UK will be extended only to New
Zealand, Canada and Australia. Of course it is
good that we have that exemption, but we should be standing in
solidarity with our European allies in calling for the ban to
end...
Mr (Maldon)
(Con):...We have to leave the customs union if the
condition of remaining in it is that we are unable to negotiate our
own trade agreements. There are precedents, although I would not
necessarily want to follow them completely. The new arrangements,
for instance, between the European Union and Canada, and between the European Union and
Ukraine, offer no application of European law in those countries
and no free movement, but do give them access to the internal
market and allow them to negotiate their own trade agreements.
Ultimately, the European Union is flexible and an arrangement is
perfectly possible...
(Carshalton and Wallington)
(LD):...What leaving the EU will do with certainty
is diminish us as a nation and reduce our influence and
international standing. That has already happened. Brexit has
forced our Prime Minister, a born-again hard-line Brexiteer, to
line up with Trump—indeed, to walk hand in hand with him. While
European leaders and Canada condemned his Muslim ban, our
Prime Minister’s initial response was to say, “Not my business.”
Worse, she immediately offered him, with indecent haste, a state
visit—far quicker than any other US President—which I am sure had
absolutely nothing to do with her desperation to secure a trade
deal, any deal, with the protectionist Trump...
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Extract from Westminster
Hall debate on the Prevent Strategy
(Bolton South East)
(Lab):...I want to make two final points. All of these
measures come from the fact that there are security issues.
However, we must remember one thing. I know we are talking about
the far right, but we must remember that while the measures all
came out of so-called Islamic terrorism, 99% of the people who
have died as a result of Daesh, al-Qaeda and other such groups
have been Muslims, whether in the middle east or the UK.
Far-right extremism has killed Muslims in Canada,
USA, Norway, the UK and other countries. Yes, there is an issue
with people having right-wing or fundamentalist views, and we
need to challenge those views, but Prevent is not the way to do
so...
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Extract from Lords
debate on NATO: Member State Spending
(Con):...The
noble Lord referred to the background we face, with Russia
rattling its sabre on NATO’s eastern frontier. Following the
outrageous transgressions of Russia in recent years in Georgia,
South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Crimea and Ukraine and, as the noble
Lord said specifically, in placing highly offensive weapons in
the Kaliningrad part of Russia next to the Baltic states, it is
worth pointing out that NATO is responding to the situation,
which reflects the urgency that NATO clearly feels. We are in the
process of deploying battalion-sized battle groups to three
Baltic states and Poland—the United States leading the one to
Poland, Canada to Latvia, Germany to
Lithuania, and the United Kingdom to Estonia. The battle groups
will be in place in order to ensure that any offensive action by
the Russians in any of those states in taking on the battle
groups will be a clear transgression of Article 5 of the NATO
treaty...
(Lab):...Noble Lords will know that defence spending in
NATO fell considerably during last year to this year and that the
United States pays 70% of NATO’s spending. You can understand
President Trump’s feelings when only the United States,
ourselves, Poland, Estonia and Greece—unlikely countries some of
them—met the 2% target set down in Newport in 2014 when NATO
visited Wales. The noble Lord, , quite rightly referred
to some of the culprits in this
regard—Spain, Canada, France, Belgium, Germany and
others. In November last year the Secretary-General of NATO, Jens
Stoltenberg, said that if all NATO countries were to meet the 2%
target then tens of billions of pounds would be added to the NATO
budget for its use...
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