Speeches by Griffith.

“I am genuinely intrigued, and I shall sit here and listen to the hon. Lady’s speech later on. Does she want divergence? Does she want us to use our Brexit freedoms, or does she seek to go back to being a rule taker and converge? We have not heard a compelling argument from the Secretary of State today as to why these p…”

“We are having the proper debate through these interventions that perhaps we should have had when the Secretary of State was introducing the Bill. That illustrates the point about putting a vast amount of ambiguity—even if it is well intentioned—into the law and how things will operate, and for a reason of which we know…”

“The hon. Member makes exactly the right point. This is a blank cheque Bill and a Trojan horse Bill. It is simply not clear under this Secretary of State, or any Secretary of State in the future once these powers have been ceded by this place, how they will be implemented. There is a real asymmetry in the constant litan…”

“On behalf of my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), I thank the Secretary of State for intervening. It is important that we legislate with full understanding of what the law says, but the point still stands on the overweighting of references to EU standards versus comparable standards f…”

“The right hon. Gentleman is exactly right, and we can contrast the number of references to the European Union throughout the Bill with, for example, our biggest single country trading partner—the United States.”

“My right hon. Friend makes the perfect point that this is precisely what the road to serfdom looks like, whether it is serfdom to an individual Minister at a moment in time or serfdom to an unelected Brussels bureaucratic elite. Why would we give up the powers of this House, the reason why we are sent here, and the abi…”

“How have we got to this point? After 35 weeks as Trade Secretary, 18 weeks since the US election, and an entire month since steel and aluminium tariffs were first announced, the Secretary of State is only now going to sit down with the Secretary of Commerce of our closest ally. While he has been correcting his CV, stee…”

“Once again, no answers come there forth. Over 1 million jobs in this country depend on trade with the United States, including thousands of jobs in our steel industry. The Secretary of State does not know when he is going to get a deal. Will he publish his red lines for that deal, his objectives and what he hopes to ac…”

“But it’s okay in the justice system?”

“I’ll do that again: higher unemployment, higher prices and lower growth. No wonder the right hon. Lady is in favour of making it harder to be sacked. This is a sad day for business and a bad day for Parliament. Business will have watched the last two days with dismay—[Interruption.] They will watch this with dismay as …”

“Before I summarise the Opposition’s view on the Bill, I pay tribute to those on the Conservative Benches who contributed during its passage. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) has held the Government to account with forensic skill on Report and in Committee. He was joined in the Bill Committ…”

“We welcome him to his place. At least the Deputy Prime Minister is honest in her unwavering support for the trade union agenda. She is proud to walk in the footsteps of Neil Kinnock, Michael Foot and the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), a conviction politician in the proper sense of the word, not …”

“There was no money left.”

“I will not, as time is limited. Yesterday, the Conservatives successfully amended the national insurance Bill in the other place to mitigate the worst of Labour’s job tax. In winding up, will the Minister confirm that the Government will respect that amendment to exempt hospices, care providers, GPs, pharmacies, small …”

“When he was seeking the votes of small business owners last summer, the Prime Minister said: “Small businesses are the lifeblood of our communities.” He said that business is “the beating heart of our economy” and told small business owners in Southampton that Labour would deliver the stability that businesses need to …”

“I deeply regret that if the hon. Lady reads the Bill, she will find that it precisely confers those powers on the Secretary of State, but she can join with those on our Benches in the other place by supporting the amendment. The Government can make clear today whether they are scaremongering or whether we should all be…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I congratulate the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) on securing this important debate. We have had a delightful virtual tour of every one of the nations around our United Kingdom this morning. I speak not only as the shado…”

“Word salad!”

“Next week, members of the Public and Commercial Services Union in the Department for Business and Trade are once again out on strike. Does the Minister consider the union’s demands to be reasonable? Will Ministers cross picket lines to return to work?”

“In the week of Labour’s latest reset, how does the Minister reconcile imposing an additional £5 billion of costs on business—on the Government’s own figures—with growing the economy? What was it about the breakfast with the Prime Minister that saw bosses laying off more workers 24 hours later?”