On the great Brexit debate
er three years.
“I don’t accept that it’s impossible that we could have a socialist government after the next election, and that government must be free to pursue economic and social measures in the interests of the vast majority of people.”
Asked whether his party’s Government might try to remove existing social protections that derive from EU law like employment rights and environmental standards, Mr Davies said: “There’s no way we’re going to tear up environmental legislation, health and safety legislation, workers’ rights. We don’t want to do that. I’m on the right of the party, I don’t want to do that. And there’s certainly nobody to the left of me who wants to do it. Why would we do that? It’s not going to make us very popular.”
Mr Vaughan was not reassured, saying: “The UK Government had the opportunity to give guarantees on workers’ rights when Article 50 was being triggered and they made sure it was voted down. And we’ve heard the words of David Davis and Liam Fox who’ve said they want to scrap EU red tape. And red tape is workers’ rights, it’s environmental protection, it’s consumer rights. That’s what they want to do.
“We’ve heard talk of a new economic model when we leave the EU, and the new economic model is a tax haven with low regulations particularly on workers’ rights.
“There are some on the far right of the Conservative Party who have been wanting the chance to impose this new economic model for a long time, and unfortunately when we leave the EU they’ll have the chance. Bit by bit by bit, they will scrap many of the workers’ rights protections we have from the EU at the moment.”
Mr Davies denied this again, adding: “Privatising the NHS – that’s been cropping up ever since about 1987. It’s just not true. And while we’re at it, I keep hearing people from other EU countries saying we’re really worried we’re going to get chucked out in a few years’ time. This includes my wife, by the way, who is a Hungarian national. We’re not going to do that either. These are just scare stories. We wouldn’t get reelected if we did.”
Mr Griffiths said: “I think we have always to be vigilant about employment and trade union rights; for example, when we’ve got a Conservative Government. We’ve had one barrage of anti-trade union legislation already on the eve of the referendum. We can’t trust Conservative governments. We’ve had 12 antitrade union laws since 1979 from Conservative governments and we always have to watch out for what they’ll try to do in whittling down workers’ rights and employment rights, and should they try to do that we’ll need unity in the labour movement, whatever our views on the EU, in order to resist it.”
Asked whether he was in favour of a complete break with the EU and a reversion to World Trade Organisation rules, which would see tariffs introduced on Welsh exports, Mr Davies said: “Ideally I’m in favour of keeping this transition as smooth as possible and that would imply staying in the Single Market. But it’s not going to be possible to do that according to the EU unless we’re willing to accept their immigration rules, and that’s not going to be acceptable.
“But access to the Single Market yes. What’s going to make that most likely is allowing the Government to go off and negotiate, to look for that, but to make it very clear to the EU that if they’re not willing to play the game, then we will carry on and leave the EU and trade on WTO rules. All these people who say we should only go ahead with this if we can have full access to the Single Market and if we don’t get it, we’ll just have to stay in the EU.”