Sunday with Niall Paterson Interview with Owen Paterson Conservative MP
ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SKY NEWS, SUNDAY WITH NIALL PATERSON
NIALL PATERSON: So should the UK be spending billions of pounds in readiness for no deal? Joining us now from Shropshire is Owen Paterson. Mr Paterson, a very good morning to you, a good name that.
OWEN PATERSON: Good morning, Niall.
NP: We will move on to Brexit in just a second but on the topic of the day, you’ve served in the Whip’s office, you know the information that a Whip’s office generally holds about the behaviour of the back benches, allegations of drug abuse, of inappropriate behaviour. If the Conservative Whip’s office currently holds information on its members along its lines right now, it should be put into the public domain or given to the relevant authorities surely?
OWEN PATERSON: Well I think that depends on the severity of the offence or the activity. In some cases some of this recently reported activity is obviously totally inappropriate but the individuals concerned have apologised but there might be, for all I know, offences which are more serious in which case perhaps the Whip’s office should take it further.
NP: But just in terms of the severity of the offence, let’s try and work out where we are on a sliding scale. Improper language, I’ll just keep it to ourselves; a bit of a grope, that’s fine but actual sexual assault, of course we’d report that?
OWEN PATERSON: Well we are seeing this right across a whole area of activity, not just the Harvey Weinstein reports but reports today that in the theatre and other areas of public entertainment, photographers behaving badly. I think is obviously incumbent on Members of Parliament to behave properly but as I said, there are certain areas where I think an admission of guilt and a full public apology is right but if the Whips are privy to much more serious allegations where an offence, an actual legal offence might have been done, they then have to take it further.
NP: Of course it’s not just former members of the Cabinet, back benchers, yesterday we had the Environment Secretary in the process of making a rather ill-judged joke, appearing to suggest that women who are the victims of sexual abuse had in some way lost some of their dignity.
OWEN PATERSON: Yes, well I was listening live to that Today broadcast and you could say the whole audience, that they were all to blame because they all roared with laughter, as did Lord Kinnock but …
NP: Did you?
OWEN PATERSON: … Michael Gove has subsequently … Yes, but this is all a question of judgement isn’t it? Michael Gove has quite rightly and very rapidly given a fulsome apology for a statement which I think at the time, personally I thought at the time was wrong and he has been quite right about that but a law has not been broken and he has quite rightly come out and apologised very quickly in a fulsome manner but I think it is worth noting that …
NP: Mr Paterson, it appears that you were just suggesting that unless a law has broken an apology is sufficient.
OWEN PATERSON: Well this is all obviously a very grey area, it depends on the severity of what you are talking about and we are talking about hypothetical events which I can’t really comment on until we know the exact detail but I would have thought a very crude rule is that if a person is found to have behaved inappropriately, inappropriate language or something like that and first of all it is very important to admit that wrong has been done and then apologises, then in my opinion that should probably bring an end to it but you are asking me, you are hinting that the Whips are privy to knowledge of much worse offences which I don’t know about. If those are actually illegal then I think it would be appropriate to go further, to higher authorities and ultimately the police.
NP: We will be speaking to Philip Dunne a little later in the programme and we’ll put that point to him but while we have you here, of course you are known as something as a Brexiteer I think it is fair to say. Your colleague Charlie Elphick is asking the Treasury for a billion pounds to prepare now for a no-deal Brexit, shouldn’t we be starting to spend on the infrastructure that we’ll require if we do crash out of the European Union without a deal?
OWEN PATERSON: Well I think all this no-deal and crash out is all rather dramatic talk. I was a signatory to a letter with some very senior people two weeks ago saying given the European Union’s flat refusal to negotiate the end commercial relationship, it would be sensible to tell them formally that we assume from now – that was the middle of November, sorry the middle of October – that we will be moving to WTO rule terms from 30th March 2019. Should they then come back to us and want to talk about an all-encompassing free trade deal, that would be great but as Charlie quite rightly said in your clip, this would be prudent insurance and it would give clarity to all the parties …
NP: But if …
OWEN PATERSON: Just let me finish, this is quite an important point, it would give clarity to all the parties, not just those who use these facilities but those who deliver them. So for instance Customs and Excise would know that they should be gearing for this eventuality and as Charlie says anyway, we should be investing in this stuff. We should have an absolutely world class customs system, world class immigration system and world class …
NP: That is a separate point but I just want to …
OWEN PATERSON: No it’s not.
NP: David Davis this week landed himself in hot water when he suggested that yes, the Commons will have a vote on whatever we agree or don’t agree with the European Union but that vote might take place after the point at which we leave the European Union. That is a statement of fact isn’t it? If the negotiations go up to the wire, even beyond the wire as Mr Davis said to the Select Committee, the only opportunity for the Commons to vote will be after we’ve left the European Union.
OWEN PATERSON: Which is why it would be very prudent now to give them notice that we are assuming that the way the talks are being conducted – and they have said now we are going to miss the whole of November, we’re not going to talk about trade unless they graciously concede it in the middle of December, so we’ll miss most of December, we won’t start talking to them until January and that is effectively from the moment we sent our letter last week, that’s three months. We should be getting on with this now as Charlie says. If they then get the signal, because they are the ones who have this huge 71.8 billion surplus with us, they’re the ones who will get clobbered by tariffs should we impose tariffs, then hopefully they will come back to us and realise that the really big issue to talk about is our future trading relationship and that would be great. We all want …
NP: But just in terms of Commons oversight of this process, from what you are saying you seem to agree with Mr Davis that despite being promised from the very beginning that the Commons would have a vote of significance on this, the vote may take place past the point at which it would have any significance.
OWEN PATERSON: Well I think David Davis and I think the government think that is unlikely and they say that the talks are actually going better than the public image is and they are confident they will get a deal but the point about triggering the WTO issue now, this is not jumping off a cliff, this is not some mad, crazy overreaction to fact that the talks haven’t started, it is just being very prudent as Charlie Elphick says, that we should take out an insurance policy that will give clarity to all our administrators, it will give clarity to all business. For instance, if you take the issue of authorised economic operators, these are trucking organisations that have basically a pass to a swift process. We’ve only got 604 of those, Germany has over 6000 so if we triggered this trucking companies could prudently start lodging bids to take on authorised economic operator status and that would speed things up at the customs down the road. Should the European Union come back and see that we’re serious about this, that would be great because what we all want really is reciprocal free trade with no tariffs, that’s the ideal.
NP: Mr Paterson, many thanks for joining us this morning.