Article 50

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Wednesday 29th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We will work with the devolved Administrations, but we will also listen to businesses and others from across the United Kingdom as they make clear to us their interests as the negotiations go forward.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

Like the Prime Minister, I supported the remain campaign in the referendum. Unlike the Prime Minister, I have been consistent in my view about how damaging Brexit will be, while she careers towards the hardest of Brexits, presumably a prisoner of the right-wing ideological Brexiteers on her own Benches. May I ask her about the executive agencies that will need to be established to replace, for example, the European Aviation Safety Agency, Euratom, or Medicines Control? Has she identified how many of those agencies we will need to have up and running in the next 18 months, how much they will cost and whether we have the capacity to staff them?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is wrong in the premise of his question. He says that the Government are going for the hardest of hard Brexits; we are not. I have been very clear in my letter to President Tusk, in my statement today and in everything else that I have said in this Chamber that we are looking for a comprehensive free trade agreement with the European Union. We can achieve that and that is what we will be working for.