Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry, responding to the appearance by David Davis, Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, said:
  
“For the second time in seven days, David Davis has appeared before Parliament to explain the Government’s policy on Brexit, but instead of presenting a plan, we got more excuses for why not, and another list of promises the Tories intend to break.

“We were told his department was so under-staffed it couldn’t yet conduct the analysis on the data it was collecting, yet further evidence of the woeful lack of planning by the Government for the impact of Brexit.

“We got weasel words explaining that the pledge to spend £350 million extra a week on the NHS had not come directly from him. We got astonishingly complacent remarks about the status of EU citizens currently living and working in the UK, which will do nothing to ease their concerns.

“And most striking of all, David Davis said that the strong commitment he had previously given to maintain EU-protected workers’ rights even after Brexit was now just ‘a personal view’, and that he merely had ‘no reason’ to believe that the Government’s policy would be different.

“But when dealing with a Tory Government who raised VAT when they said they wouldn’t, who cut tax credits when they said they wouldn’t, and who reorganised the NHS when they promised not to, we now have every reason to believe those workers’ rights are at risk.

“This is all the more reason why the Labour Party will demand that the Government’s plans for post-Brexit Britain are laid before Parliament, so that they can be properly debated and voted upon.

“It is ludicrous and misguided for David Davis to claim that this cannot happen so as to keep the Tory negotiating strategy secret from our European partners, and that we should just trust them to get it right.

“We have already seen what happens when the Tories try to do everything themselves, refuse to consult other parties, and then present the rest of Europe with an undeliverable and unrepresentative wish-list of demands. It was a disaster under David Cameron, and it would be a disaster under David Davis.

“Parliament must therefore not just be given a voice in the Government’s negotiating strategy, we must be given a vote, as the Tory-chaired Lords’ constitutional committee has said today. That is not to stop Brexit happening, but to ensure that it happens in the right way.

“For that reason, we need David Davis, Boris Johnson and Liam Fox to stop stalling and spell out exactly what this process will mean.

“They are rapidly turning from the Three Brexiteers to the Three Brass Monkeys: blind to the truth, deaf to the facts, and refusing to speak the reality.

“They need to come clean, and for the sake of the country, tell us what on earth is the plan.”