Chris Leslie, the Independent Group for Change MP, asks Gove to condemn the No 10 briefing against Angela Merkel this morning. He says it has provoked “racist” attacks against Germany from Leave.EU (eg, here) and others.
Gove says he did not hear Boris Johnson’s call with Merkel. But he says the Germans are “good friends of this country”. And he disassociates himself from any racist language about them.
But he does not comment on the substance of the No 10 briefings.
Back in the Commons Gove claims he has yet to meet a single business or business organisation that thinks a no-deal Brexit would be worse than a Jeremy Corbyn government.
Sylvia Hermon, the independent MP from North Down in Northern Ireland, says Boris Johnson will never be forgotten or forgiven for undermining the Good Friday agreement.
Gove says he respects Hermon, but does not think it is the PM’s intention for a moment to undermine the GFA.
Tory former cabinet minister questions ‘character’ of unattributable briefings from No 10
The Tory former cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell invited Gove to condemn the unattributable briefings coming out of No 10. (See 10.25am and 10.34am.) He asked Gove if he was “proud of the character” of these “quasi-official briefings”.
Gove did not criticise the briefings directly, but he said in politics it was important to use language that showed respect for people with differing points of view.
UPDATE: These are from HuffPost’s Paul Waugh.
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Gove says it is EU, not the UK, that is threatening security cooperation after Brexit
Yvette Cooper, the Labour chair of the home affairs select committee, asks about the suggestions from the unnamed No 10 source who briefed the Spectator that the UK should use security as leverage in the Brexit talks. (See 10.25am.) Sir Keir Starmer also asked about this, but did not get a reply. Cooper asks Gove to condemn this threat. He says anyone making threats like this should be removed from No 10. She says people in government need to behave like grownups.
Gove says it is vitally important that the UK retains security cooperation with its EU allies. But he says the UK also cooperates with countries outside the EU. He says the UK will continue to cooperate with the Irish police force, and with other police forces.
He says the home secretary, Priti Patel, has written to the European commission asking if security cooperation in various areas can continue after Brexit. But the EU declined the offer. So it is the UK that is more committed to security cooperation than the EU, he says.
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‘Enough, enough, enough – we need to leave,’ Gove tells MPs
Here is Michael Gove’s peroration as he was responding to Sir Keir Starmer.
We in this government have compromised. We in this government are showing flexibility. We in this government seek to leave [with] a deal.
But, faced with the delaying, disruptive and denying tactics of the opposition, we say on behalf of the 17.4m: ‘Enough, enough, enough – we need to leave.’
Actually, Gove said: “We in this government seek to leave without a deal,” but he clearly meant with a deal, which is why I have transcribed it as such above. But if you believe in Freudian slips, that may be revealing.
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Gove is responding to Starmer.
He says the PM is not here because he is talking to EU partners.
He says, if Starmer wanted a deal, he should not have voted against one three times.
He says his no-deal readiness document was published three hours ago. But Starmer has not asked a single question about it, he says.
He says Starmer is only interested in politics, not policy.
On customs checks in Northern Ireland, he says they can take place away from the border.
He says the UK plans would protect the integrity of the single market. But is Labour serious about protecting the integrity of the UK? He claims it isn’t, because it would be happy for there to be a border down the Irish Sea.
(In fact, Labour wants the whole of the UK to stay in the customs union.)
He says the government wants to get a deal. But faced with the “delaying, denying and disruptive tactics of the opposition”, the government says enough is enough, let’s get on and leave.
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Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, is responding to Gove.
The prime minister should be here. Talks with the EU are collapsing as we speak.
Starmer says the UK offer to the EU for a replacement to the backstop is not serious. These plans “were never going to work”, he says.
But, instead of taking questions about the talks, the government is descending into a blame game.
He quotes the briefings from sources close to No 10. They are blaming various other people.
He says this is characteristic of Boris Johnson – never taking responsibility for his actions.
He says threatening to withdraw security cooperation from the EU, as a No 10 source did yesterday, is “beneath contempt”. He challenges Gove to deny this, and to back what Julian Smith said about this. (See 12.04pm.)
He asks Gove if the government thinks the talks are over.
He says Gove has presented Brexit as if he were reading a reassuring bedtime story. But the last time Gove was here he said the automative sector said it was ready for no deal, when in fact the industry said that was not true.
He quotes the IFS analysis of no deal. That is why the Benn act was so essential, he says.
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Gove turns to the opportunities for Britain from Brexit.
It will be able to take its seat at the WTO.
It will be able to have a points-based immigration policy.
It will be able to have its own policies for fishing and farming.
It will be able to set its own rules for the service sector.
But of course no deal will bring challenges, he says. He repeats the point about how the government wants a deal. But he says delaying Brexit would be damaging, too, because it would let down the 17.4 million people who voted for Brexit.
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Gove summarises some of the actions taken by departments to prepare for no deal.
But he says the EU needs to reciprocate. They should match the “generosity and flexibility” shown to EU nationals living in the UK, he says. So far “very few” EU states have matched what the UK has offered to EU nationals here, he says.
Gove says the government has also today published its updated tariff regime for a no-deal Brexit.
Here is the Guardian story about that announcement.
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Michael Gove’s Commons statement on no-deal readiness report
In the Commons, Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister in charge of no-deal planning, is making a statement about the no-deal readiness report published today.
He says the government has a “strong desire to leave with a deal”.
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