Murnaghan Interview with David Davis, MP, Secretary of State for Brexit, 17.07.16
ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS
DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now a number of those who campaigned to leave the European Union have been given top jobs of course in Theresa May’s new cabinet. Boris Johnson is the Foreign Secretary, Liam Fox is the Trade Secretary and I am joined now by the Secretary of State for Leaving the European Union, David Davis MP.
DAVID DAVIS: For exit. That makes it Department X!
DM: Oh I see where you’re going, yes. Well a very good morning to you Secretary of State and tell me, you three Brexiteers as it is termed in some of the papers today, how are you co-ordinating this, who’s in charge? Your department is presumably steering the overall thing?
DAVID DAVIS: Bear in mind Boris is Foreign Secretary, he’s got big other responsibilities, it’s not just about Brexit and ditto trade, although trade is a massively important component of what we are about to do and that is how it works. The person who is in charge, to be clear about this, is actually Theresa May and you see this straight away because on Friday she went up to … she broke the reshuffle, I mean how many times do Prime Minister’s go away in the middle of a reshuffle? She broke the sequence of the reshuffle to go to see Nicola Sturgeon to talk about Scotland’s perspective and what we can do to make it easier for Scotland.
DM: You mentioned it, I was going to talk about it later but do you think there is a way – we heard Nicola Sturgeon talking on the Andrew Marr Show and Nicola Sturgeon still believes there might be some kind of way, she’s leaving it very vague but Scotland could stay in the European Union and perhaps not leave the UK?
DAVID DAVIS: I don't think that works. One of our really challenging issues to deal with will be the internal border we have with Southern Ireland and we’re not going to go about creating other internal borders inside the United Kingdom. The aim here is to try to address the concerns of people who are basically Remain people who are saying we’re worried about inward investment, we’re worried about trade with Europe, we’re worried about all sorts of things and we’re trying as best we can – they can’t have a veto because there are seventeen and a half million people who have given us a mandate, they have told us what to do, we can’t disobey it but what we can do is try and do what we can to minimise any disruption, turbulence ….
DM: But they can’t have another independence referendum, Westminster won’t legislate.
DAVID DAVIS: Well I don't know, I don't think they would want one to be honest. I think there’s a lot of skirmishing around this. Think about the circumstance that Scotland’s in now, when oil price was very, very high then they still were in deficit, now the oil price is very, very low they are enormously in deficit so I would be very surprised if the Scots would vote for that.
DM: So let’s get on to the big picture, the timetable first of all. You envisage the UK formally leaving the European Union on 1st January 2019.
DAVID DAVIS: Early next year. Let me just explain …
DM: That’s the Article 50.
DAVID DAVIS: Yes, that’s the trigger to the Treaty and there are two big reasons for the outer part of that envelope. One is, we are, we have got a huge negotiation to do, somebody described it as the biggest negotiation ever in history and so we have to get all of it right. We only have one chance, get one of these things wrong and it lasts forever, right? So we’ve got to get it all right so there is a big consultation going on. I was talking on Friday night to the Head of the TUC and I am seeing various party members this week, not just Tory party members, other party members. We are organising a huge consultation, we are talking to the CBI, the NFU, the research institutes, everybody you can think of.
DM: The thought occurs, Mr Davis, you are in favour of small government, you are going to be recruiting thousands of bureaucrats for trade negotiations and you are talking about getting it right and all these deals to do with every country in the world …
DAVID DAVIS: My department at the moment is 40 people!
DM: But that is a serious point isn’t it? Countries like New Zealand are offering us some trade negotiators because we’ve got very few and they work with the EU.
DAVID DAVIS: We won’t be doing that, I’ll come back to that in a second. It will grow to a couple of hundred people, that will be the size of the department in due course but interestingly I am having the most brilliant people in Whitehall applying to work, we’ve got ten people for every job so actually, clearly fast track civil servants see this as the place to be so we’ll have good quality. But let’s come back to the timetable because that sort of starts and we’ve got to get that done properly so that makes it sort of the beginning of next year, earlyish, right. The end of the time table of course is set by the two year, Article 50 takes two years but there is an advantage to us in this and people have not seen this yet. Liam is going around the world, he is going to be making trade deals, huge trade deals all over the place and when we get … but none of them can come into effect whilst we’re inside the European Union.
DM: You’re not meant even to be talking to them.
DAVID DAVIS: Well that’s what they say, they can’t tell us who to talk to but what are they are going to do … ?
DM: Throw us out?
DAVID DAVIS: Exactly! So we’re talking to large numbers of people who all want to help and we’ll get a very, very large trade area, much bigger than the European Union, probably ten times the size. Well I am not going to set Liam targets but a multiple of the size of the European Union and the moment we leave they will all come in. Now that actually is an enormous upside to this thing and so that’s why the timetable has got to …
DM: You were writing today in the Mail on Sunday about EU nationals living and working here and you’re saying this whole idea – and Theresa May has muddied the waters as well, hasn’t she, saying we might have to revisit the issue of EU nations who live here already. You are saying indefinite leave to remain protection only applies before a certain date, what would that date be?
DAVID DAVIS: Let’s put the backdrop to it first, if I may. Number one, I want to see a generous settlement for the people here already because they didn’t pick this circumstance, we did. They came here thinking they could be here for life or whatever, some have been here for many, many decades. So we want to get a generous settlement for them. We want to do that at the same time as we get a similarly generous settlement for British citizens living within the EU. Now there has been a concern raised that that, the sheer generosity of settlement, leave to remain, pension rights, whatever it might be …
DM: But are you saying, just pause a minute Mr Davis, those that are already here from the EU, that’s not in question? Theresa May said that might have to be negotiated.
DAVID DAVIS: We have to do it altogether. I’m telling you what my aim is. At the moment I have a lot of aims and …
DM: Have you got a blanket assurance now that if you are from the EU and you live in this country you can stay?
DAVID DAVIS: Let me say this: I would expect to get to a circumstance where everybody is well protected but if separate it out or if we pre-empt it, then you put somebody else at risk. If somebody said oh you’re using people as bargaining counters – no we’re not, we’re stopping anybody being used as bargaining counters by doing it all together. So that’s where we start but if we make a very generous settlement as I’d like to do, then people are going to say oh that will attract a lot more people in because they want to beat the deadline so what I’ve said is, let’s deal with that issue when we come to it. One way of dealing with it could be saying okay, only people who arrived before a certain date get this protection, there are other ways too but we’ve got to do it within the law as it stands because at that point we’ll still be within the European Union.
DM: But this certain date, and you are being unspecific about what that certain date might be, you’ve started the rush now haven’t you because people listening will be saying right, I want to come and live in the UK and there is going to be a date, we don’t know what it is but it certainly isn’t now so I’ll come now.
DAVID DAVIS: I’ll tell you, if we set a date that’s when you start the rush.
DM: So you are saying there is going to be one?
DAVID DAVIS: No, I don't think so because people will understand that if they come here in a big rush to try and grab a set of advantages that we’re putting in place for people who have come here expecting us to remain within the European Union forever and they have done exactly the right thing, they have come to work, they do a good job, they are paying their taxes, we mustn’t if we can possibly avoid it penalise them, so I don’t intend to.
DM: So how will you know, Britain will not have left the European Union, how will you know that a French person walking down the street didn’t arrive after, let’s pick June 24th, how will you know?
DAVID DAVIS: We have plenty of … well they will have employment records for a start most of them and we have other records, there will be plenty of records, there won’t be a problem there.
DM: But they will have to produce those will they?
DAVID DAVIS: Oh I don't think we’ll even need to do that, I think we’d know anyway. This problem …
DM: We don’t even know how many illegal immigrants are in the country? Mr Davis, you’ve been on the programme telling me about that before.
DAVID DAVIS: That’s a different matter, illegal immigrants are a problem but no, people who are here legally … and bear in mind this is only an issue if there is a surge. This is only an issue if there is a surge of people arriving and I don't think that is by any means certain.
DM: But don’t you think you are in danger of causing one as I said before by saying this is something worth considering. If you are listening or hear about this interview in another European country you’d think I need to get over there before they shut the door.
DAVID DAVIS: No, it won’t be like that and if I gave you a date, it would. If I gave you a date, it would. If I said it was going to happen next week it would. You raised 24th, that’s already passed so there are all sort of ways, that’s not the only way of dealing with it, there are other ways of dealing with this but we must, in many of these issues as I said to you at the beginning, six months to actually work out what we’re going to do, how we’re going to start it, in many of these issues there are not easy answers and you deal with them when they come up.
DM: And the other broader question here is do you believe that the UK, whatever you negotiate, the UK can keep its access to the European single market?
DAVID DAVIS: Well keep its access or whether it keeps tariff free access is the issue and I think yes, I think that’s what we’re aiming for. Bear in mind the mandate we have been given is control the borders, get back control of our country, we’ve got to meet all of that but I think in the next year or two we’re going to see the Europeans change away from their initial project fear stance if you like towards the stance now taken by the German equivalent of the CBI, we must talk to the Brits to make sure free trade works in both elections because they know what we’ve always said – they depend as much on us, more on us actually, than we do on them.
DM: Secretary of State, thank you very much indeed.
