David Davis says MPs will vote down Brexit deal if future trade terms unknown
2 min read
David Davis has said Parliament will vote down the final Brexit deal reached with Brussels in the autumn if future trade terms are not broadly agreed with the EU.
The Brexit Secretary said MPs would refuse to agree the £37bn Brexit divorce bill if there is no agreement on trade by the time an expected "meaningful vote" comes to Parliament.
“If there is no trade deal, I don’t think there’s a deal…” he told an event hosted by the Spectator.
“Can you imagine Parliament voting through a Withdrawal Bill without a deal? Not a chance...”
But he added: “We’re not going to lose that vote. It will be a good deal and Parliament will vote for it.”
And he insisted that a vote against the final deal would not be a means of halting the Brexit process either way.
“We are leaving the European union. Full stop," Mr Davis said.
“The Prime Minister has said this enough times, we are leaving the EU. Parliament’s not going to change that fact.”
It comes after Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer said it would be "unthinkable" for the UK to crash out of the bloc on world trade terms if MPs reject the deal - although Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry has said Labour will probably back it.
Elsewhere, Mr Davis dismissed Boris Johnson’s claim that the Irish border dilemma was being used by Brussels to try and keep the UK in a customs union.
He also denied Chris Grayling’s claim last week that there would be no checks on lorries at Dover, adding that there would be “some checks”, but that “under any customs arrangement, we don’t check everything”.
And he confirmed Britain would try to maintain an agreement that replicated the European Arrest Warrant.
However when given the example of whether Britain outside of the EU would extradite a Catalan politician to face charges in Spain, he accepted keeping the same rules “doesn’t give you much choice”.
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