Brexit Negotiations

Chris Leslie Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, I can. The point of the agreement is to ensure that those rights and obligations do carry on in the future. A number of these issues are set out in the joint progress reports; there are specific references to the rules on healthcare, on social security systems and so forth. We are very clear that it is important that those rights be available for UK citizens in the EU, and they will be.

[Mr Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I wonder whether the Prime Minister will help us to clarify what is meant by “full alignment”. There was speculation in the newspapers this weekend that No. 10 had been selling it to the Foreign Secretary as a meaningless concept. I do not want her to say, “Full alignment means full alignment”; I want her to say whether she means it to apply to all areas of trade, or whether it is limited to agriculture and energy. Will she explain what she means by “full alignment”?

[The Prime Minister]

Full alignment means that we will be achieving the same objectives. I set out in my Florence speech that there are a number of ways in which we can approach this. There will be some areas where we want to achieve the same objectives by the same means. In others we will want to achieve the same objectives by different means. If we look at the areas covered currently by north-south co-operation, we see there are six of those areas. Two of them are not covered generally by the acquis—education and health—but there are other issues, such as the environment, waste and water management, the electricity market, agriculture, and questions relating to road and rail transport.