EU Trade Agreements: Replication
Debate between Antoinette Sandbach and Liam Fox(5 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Dr Fox
The central premise of the hon. Gentleman’s question is that we intend to rip up our trade agreement with what he describes as our most important trading partner, the EU27. We have no intention of having a breach. We want to have a full, liberal trading arrangement with the European Union. We do not want Britain to be subjugated in a political relationship that the voters have told us to leave. When it comes to continuity, the Government have set out what we will do with the agreements. For each of them, we have set out to Parliament—this is in both Libraries—the text of the agreement, an explanatory memorandum and the political statement on where there is any change between the agreement in place and the one we are rolling over, if utter and complete replication has not been possible. We have done that already, and we shall do that with the others.
Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)
I heard the Secretary of State give the commitment on the guidance that he is going to give. My constituents who are seeking to export to countries now do not know, at the point of departure, what regime their goods will face on arrival. I note the Secretary of State’s attacks on the Opposition parties, but he may wish to recall that 117 Government MPs did not vote for the Prime Minister’s deal, many because of their ideological commitment to WTO rules. Given that we are 44 days away, when will that guidance be issued to companies in my constituency? I was one of the 40 Back-Bench MPs who supported the Prime Minister’s deal.
Dr Fox
The Government are assessing where we are with each of the agreements. Where we believe that it will not be possible fully to replicate, we will set out a technical notice in the coming days. Let me give my hon. Friend the example of Turkey, which is part of the customs union: unless we get an agreement with the European Union, we will not be able to maintain the current pattern of trade with Turkey, although we would look to see where we could mitigate any problems that came up.