Stephen Doughty

I am grateful to have the chance to respond to this afternoon’s debate. I did not know that the House had so many fans of “Quantum Leap”— a favourite show of mine when I was younger. Of course, fans of the show will know that Sam Beckett was advised by a hologram called Al, a US admiral who would come in and give good advice on how to get through challenges. Instead, we have had the spectre of Sir Bill Cash coming in via text to Conservative Members. Who would have thought it? This debate has been a journey back to the past. On this side of the House, we have a Government who want to take this country forward, not back. That is a stark contrast with those on the other side, who seem stuck in the last decade. We will not be rejoining the EU, the single market or the customs union, or returning to freedom of movement, but we look forward to welcoming Presidents von der Leyen and Costa to London next week for the first ever UK-EU summit—the first annual summit to take place between the UK and the EU. The Leader of the Opposition recently said: “We announced that we would leave the European Union before we had a plan for growth outside the EU. These mistakes were made because we told people what they wanted to hear first and then tried to work it out later.” Of course, the lesson that we have learned, and to which the Conservative party might want to pay careful attention, is that failing to plan is inevitably planning to fail. This Government will not take the same reckless, chaotic and dogmatic approach when it comes to the British people and our national interests. That is why, under the leadership of our Prime Minister, this Government were elected on a mandate for change, which is what we are delivering. We have been resetting our relationships with our EU partners and our wider European partners, and we are using those strengthened relationships to deliver growth, prosperity, safety and security. I, the Paymaster General, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and others have been working to do that. Just this week, we hosted the Weimar+ Foreign Ministers meeting on Ukraine, and we have had high-level engagement with many European leaders. We have been travelling around the continent, driving forward growth, driving forward action on illegal immigration, and driving forward relationships for our security and our defence. We are also setting up structures to ensure that our European partnerships deliver in the long term, including treaties or leader-level summits with some of our closest partners, such as France, Germany, Poland and Ireland—not to mention the exciting and successful state visit by His Majesty the King to Italy last month. I am delighted that Buckingham Palace has today announced that President Macron, accompanied by Mrs Macron, has accepted an invitation from His Majesty to pay a state visit to the UK, and the Prime Minister and President will hold their next summit during that visit. Increased engagement has already delivered results for the UK. On growth, we have had £250 million of Czech investment in Rolls-Royce small modular reactors and a £600 million investment by the Polish logistics company InPost, and Iberdrola is doubling its investment through ScottishPower over the next four years. On security, we have new defence agreements with Germany and Romania, and new negotiations on defence agreements with Poland and Norway. On migration, we have a joint action plan with Germany and new migration deals with Serbia, Kosovo, Slovenia and Slovakia, and we have also agreed new measures to tackle people-smuggling gangs with France. On energy and climate, we have new civil nuclear co-operation between the UK and Finland, and other European countries are responding positively to that. Crucially, on security and defence—