Oral Answers to Questions

Bambos Charalambous Excerpts

Tuesday 20th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

14. What assessment he has made of the strength of the UK’s future diplomatic co-operation with its current EU partners after leaving the EU.

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

22. What assessment he has made of the strength of the UK’s future diplomatic co-operation with its current EU partners after leaving the EU.

--- Later in debate ---

[Boris Johnson]

If I may, I will respectfully resist the alternatives that the hon. Gentleman lays before me. Last week, I was trying to make the point that we now have a massive opportunity to come together—people who voted remain and people who voted leave—to get a positive arrangement and a positive Brexit that will be of massive benefit to people both in this country and in the whole of the European continent. If we are ambitious and positive, I have absolutely no doubt that we can pull it off.

[Bambos Charalambous]

The Foreign Secretary claimed last week that it would be “intolerable” for the UK not to set its own regulations after Brexit. The next day, a Harvard survey of UK importers and exporters found that the last thing that they want is the dual regulatory burden of having to comply with both UK and EU rules. Will the Foreign Secretary tell us who is right?

[Boris Johnson]

I think that the Harvard survey is right: nobody wants two sets of regulations to be imposed on the UK economy. That is why the Prime Minister was completely right—wasn’t she?—at Lancaster House and, indeed, in Florence and in sundry other places when she said that Brexit means taking back control of our money, our borders and, above all, our laws. That is what we are going to do.